"I spoke as if from my very soul, and said: 'Oh, God, if there is a way out of this fearful place, show it to me, take me to it.'" His narrator says White's voice here became husky and his features quivered.

"I was still looking up with my hands clasped when I felt a different movement of the raft and turning to look at the whirlpool it was some distance behind (he could see it in the night!), and I was floating on the smoothest current I had yet seen in the canyon." The current was now very slow and he found that the rapids were past.

The terrible mythical whirlpool at the innocent mouth of the Little Colorado was the end of the turmoil, though he said the canyon went on, the course of the river being exceedingly crooked, and shut in by precipices of white sand rock! There is no white "sand-rock" in the Grand Canyon.
All through this terrific gorge wherein the river falls some eighteen hundred feet, White found a slow current and his troubles from rapids were over! For 217 miles of the worst piece of river in the world, he found no difficulty.

The gloom and lack of food alone oppressed him, and he thought of plunging from the raft, but lacked the courage.

Had he really entered the Grand Canyon his raft would have been speedily reduced to toothpicks and he would not have had the choice of remaining upon it.