In such a barren land, this is the item of first importance, and yet many of the leaders treated it apparently as of slight consequence.

Great discomfort and suffering and death often followed a failure to provide proper supplies, or, when provided, to take sufficient care to preserve them.
On the 25th of May, 1889, Brown's party was ready and started from the point where the Rio Grande Western crosses Green River.

There were sixteen men and six boats.

Five of the boats were new; the sixth was the one Kendrick and Rigney had used on the Grand River trip.

The chief engineer of the proposed railway was Robert Brewster Stanton, and that he was not in the very beginning given the entire management was most unfortunate, for Brown himself seems not to have had a realisation of the enormous difficulties of the task before him.