White clung to the logs with the grip of death.

His comrade stood up for an instant with the pole in his hands, as if to guide the raft from the rocks against which it was plunging; but he had scarcely straightened before the raft seemed to leap down a chasm and, amid the deafening roar of waters, White heard a shriek that thrilled him to the heart, and, looking around, saw, through the mist and spray, the form of his comrade tossed for an instant on the water, then sinking out of sight in a whirlpool." On the fifth day White lashed himself to the raft.

He then describes a succession of rapids, passing which with great difficulty he reached a stream that he afterward learned was the Little Colorado.

He said the canyon was like that of the San Juan, but they are totally different.
The current of this stream swept across that of the Colorado, "causing in a black chasm on the opposite bank a large and dangerous whirlpool." He could not avoid this and was swept by the cross current into this awful place, which, to relieve the reader's anxiety, I hasten to add, does not exist.

There is no whirlpool whatever at the mouth of the Little Colorado, nor any other danger.