Stanton says that in all his experience in the Western mountains he never heard anything like it.
"Nowhere has the awful grandeur equalled that night in the lonesome depths of what was to us death's canyon." The next day was fair, and by two in the afternoon, July 19th, they were on the surface of the country, twenty-five hundred feet above the river, and that night reached a cattle ranch.
By November 25th of the same year (1889) the indefatigable Stanton had organised a new party to continue the railway survey.

He still had confidence in the scheme, and he refused to give up.

And this time the boats were planned with some regard to the waters upon which they were to be used.

McDonald was sent to superintend their building at the boatyard of H.H.Douglas & Co., Waukegan, Illinois.

There were three, each twenty-two feet long, the same as our boats, four and one-half feet beam, and twenty-two inches deep, and each weighed 850 pounds.