We Have An Unknown Distance Yet To Run

We are now ready to start on our way down the Great Unknown. Our boats, tied to a common stake, are chafing each other, as they are tossed by the fretful river. They ride high and buoyant, for their loads are lighter than we could desire. We have but a month's rations remaining. The flour has been resifted through the mosquito-net sieve; the spoiled bacon has been dried, and the worst of it boiled; the few pounds of dried apples have been spread in the sun, and reshrunken to their normal bulk; the sugar has all melted, and gone on its way down the river; but we have a large sack of coffee. The lighting of the boats has this advantage: they will ride the waves better, and we shall have but little to carry when we make a portage.
We are three-quarters of a mile in the depths of the earth, and the great river shrinks into insignificance, as it dashes its angry waves against the walls and cliffs; they are but puny ripples, and we but pygmies, running up and down the sands or lost among the boulders.
We have an unknown distance yet to run; an unknown river yet to explore. What falls there are we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not. Ah, well, we may conjecture many things. The men talk as cheerfully as ever; jests are bandied about freely this morning; but to me the cheer is somber and the jests are ghastly.
--John Wesley Powell
(journal entry from August 13, 1869 upon reaching the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado Rivers)

Little Colorado River
(top)

Cape Solitude
(middle)

from the Confluence
(below)