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Show 98 EXPLORATION OF THE CANONS OF THE COLORADO. run it in the morning. Then we cross the river, and go into camp for the night on some rocks, in the mouth of the little side caiion. After supper Captain Howlaiid asks to have a talk with me. We walk up the little creek a short distance, and I soon find that his object is to remonstrate against my determination to proceed. He thinks that we had better abandon the river here. Talking with him, I learn that his brother, William Dunn, and himself have determined to go no farther in the boats. So we return to camp. Nothing is said to the other men. For the last two days, our course has not been plotted. I sit down and do this now, for the purpose of finding where we are by dead reckoning. It is a clear night, and I take out the sextant to make observation for latitude, and find that the astronomic determination agrees very nearly with that of the plot-quite as closely as might be expected, from a meridian observation on a planet. In a direct line, we must be about forty five miles from the mouth of the Rio Virgin. If we can reach that point, we know that there are settlements up that river about twenty miles. This forty five miles, in a direct line, will probably be eighty or ninety in the meandering line of the river. But then we know that there is comparatively open country for many miles above the mouth of the Virgin, which is our point of destination. As soon as I determine all this, I spread my plot on the sand, and wake Rowland, who is sleeping down by the river, and show him where I suppose we are, and where several Mormon settlements are situated. We have another short talk about the morrow, and he lies down again; but for me there is no sleep. All night long, I pace up and down a little path, on a few yards of sand beach, along by the river. Is it wise to go on? I go to the boats again, to look at pur rations. I feel satisfied that we can get over the danger immediately before us; what there maybe below I know not. From our outlook yesterday, on the cliffs, the canon seemed to make another great bend to the south, and this, from our experience heretofore, means more and higher granite walls. I am not sure that we can climb out of the canon here, and, when at the top of the wall, I know enough of the country to be certain that it is a desert of rock and sand, between this and the nearest Mormon town, which, on the most direct line, must be sev- |
