Here the engineer, Carroll, and Captain Robinson devoted themselves to making her again serviceable, while, with the skiff, Ives and two companions continued on up the deep gorge.

Though this was the end of the upward journey, so far as the Explorer was concerned, Johnson with his steamboat had managed to go clear through this canyon.
Rations were at a low stage, consisting entirely, for the past three weeks, of corn and beans, purchased from the natives, but even on this diet without salt the skiff party, worked its way steadily upward over many rapids through the superb chasm.

"No description," says Ives, "can convey an idea of the varied and majestic grandeur of this peerless waterway.

Wherever the river makes a turn, the entire panorama changes, and one startling novelty after another appears and disappears with bewildering rapidity." I commend these pages of Lieutenant Ives, and, in fact, his whole report, to all who delight in word-painting of natural scenery, for the lieutenant certainly handled his pen as well as he did his sword.* Emerging from the solemn depths of Black Canyon (twenty-five miles long) he and his small party passed Fortification Rock and continued on two miles up the river to an insignificant little stream coming in from the north, which he surmised might be the Virgen, though he hardly thought it could be, and it was not.

It was Vegas Wash.