George Salmon, R.W.James, Thos.

Hoagland, George Phifer, Wm.
Roberts, Privates Drew, Flynn, and Keegan, and six Mohaves, making twenty in all.
"The exploration of the Colorado River," says Wheeler, "may now be considered complete." The question may fairly be asked, Why was the exploration now any more complete than it was before Wheeler made this unnecessary trip?
Powell, two years before, had been through the part ascended, and Wheeler, so far as I can determine, added little of value to what was known before.

If he thought Powell had not completed the work of exploration, as his words imply, the exploration was still not complete, for there remained the distance to the Little Colorado, and to the Paria, and so on up to the source of the river, which Wheeler had not been over.

If he accepted Powell's exploration ABOVE Diamond Creek, why did he not accept it below?
His nerve and luck in accomplishing the ascent to Diamond Creek deserve great praise, but the trip itself cannot be considered anything but a needless waste of energy.
Meanwhile, as noted in the last chapter, our own party had passed the Crossing of the Fathers, had arrived at the mouth, of the Paria, and, according to our plans, had cached our boats there for the winter while we proceeded to inaugurate our land work of triangulation.

A number of us were left for a while in camp in a valley lying between the Kaibab Plateau, then called Buckskin Mountain, and what is now called Paria Plateau, at a spring in a gulch of the Vermilion Cliffs.