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Show 106 I now have a ( 22-foot 22foot ) boat made of ( U-911uge U911uge ) iron and wira ; it has a beani of 5 feet , an ( 18-incli 18incli IS-inch ISinch ) . propeller and the 9kag below is over 10 inches ; it draws too much water and I am figuring on putting on a stern wheel and intend to put this boat in the Green River and operate it there , , and I expect to go down to the junction and thence up to Moab in that boat . ( R . 3448-9 , Vol . 18 . ) TValter E . ( Mendenhall Alemdenhall ) testified : I ( am ani ) seventy years old and spent most of my later life in the neighborhood of the San Juan and Colorado rivers . In the summer of 1S98 I went by team and wagon from Lake City , Colorado , , first to Bluff and thence down to the mouth of Comb Wash with a companion who was an old river man . We made a 14 or ( 15-foot 15foot ) boat having a draft of about 8 inches loaded and an S by ( 10-foot 10foot ) raft , and put them into the San Juan River at Comb Wash or Chinle Creek , which was right close by , and went down the river in the latter part of July or August of that year . I ( don't dont ) remember how many feet of water there were at Comb Wash at that time , but recall that Indians forded there on horseback and I ( don't dont ) think it was necessary for them to swim their horses , but I ( didn't didnt ) notice ( particu particu- particu ) larly . . Savage handled the raft and I handled the boat ; we had our camp outfit and tools in the boat . At one point on the downstream trip the raft became fastened so solidly to a rock that we had to take it apart to get it off ; I went below and caught the pieces of lumber as they came down . We ( didn't didnt ) rebuild the raft because we were at about where we wanted to stop . We made camp 8 or ( 10 1.0 ) miles below Comb Wash where we put in our water elevator at the edge of the river to lift the water , and remained there for four days or a week . A flood came down one night after we had finished putting our pump in and washed it and our elevator away before we could save ( them theni ) . We had only panned a little sand with a rocker , and walked up to where we had left our team and wagon and went back to our home in Colorado . I believe we left our boat with some people who were there in the canyon ; there were perhaps twelve or fifteen prospectors there at that time . ( R . 3452-9 , Vol . 19 . ) In October , 1893P , my father and ( brother brotlier ) accompanied me back to just below Comb Wash , ( bringing- bringing bringing ) our team and wagon with us . . All of the river bed in that section had been located so we ( couldn't couldnt ) get any ground to work , so we went down into the lower canyon where we got a boat , ( re- re ) maining there for nearly a year , , my father and brother ( stay- stay ) |