Geo. M. Wheeler's report on Explorations West of the 100th Meridian.
The trappers and prospectors who had some experience on the Green and
the Colorado have left either no records or very incomplete ones. It
seems tolerably certain, however, that no experience of importance
has escaped notice. So far as attempts at descent are concerned, they
invariably met with speedy disaster and were given up.

In writing the Spanish and other foreign proper names I have in no
case translated, because such translations result in needless
confusion. To translate "Rio del Tizon" as Firebrand River is making
another name of it. Few would recognise the Colorado River under the
title of Red River, as used, for example, in Pattie's narrative.
While Colorado means red, it is quite another matter as a NAME. Nor
do I approve of hyphenating native words, as is so frequently done.
It is no easier to understand Mis-sis-sip-pi than Mississippi. My
thanks are due to Mr. Thomas Moran, the distinguished painter, for
the admirable sketch from nature he has so kindly permitted a
reproduction of for a frontispiece. Mr. Moran has been identified as
a painter of the Grand Canyon ever since 1873, when he went there
with one of Powell's parties and made sketches from the end of the
Kaibab Plateau which afterwards resulted in the splendid picture of
the Grand Canyon now owned by the Government.

I am indebted to Prof. A. H. Thompson for the use of his river diary
as a check upon my own, and also for many photographs now difficult
to obtain; and to Dr. G. K. Gilbert, Mr. E. E. Howell, Dr. T.
Mitchell Prudden, and Mr. Delancy Gill for the use of special
photographs. Other debts in this line I acknowledge in each instance
and hence will not repeat here. I had hoped to have an opportunity of
again reading over the diary which "Jack" Sumner kept on the first