OCR Text |
Show miners were taken for the 73 purpose of converting the lumber in the boats and rafts into sluice boxes . The operations possessed none of the elements embraced in the words ( "useful useful ) commerce , " nor can such a use be termed a public use for transportation in customary modes . Every case decided by the Appellate Courts of the United States wherein the question of navigation was involved sustains the view that , in order to constitute a river a navigable one , it must appear that such river is commercially used or susceptible of commercial use by the public for the purposes of transportation . This of necessity excludes from the category of navigable rivers those upon which travel and transportation are limited to private purposes . In The Montello Case , 20 Wall . 430 , this Court states that the Fox River had from the earliest times been used as a highway of commerce between the East and the Northwest , and that an immense fur trade was carried over it for more than a century . Likewise , in The Daniel Ball , 10 Wall . 557 , public commercial use of the river was clearly shown . In Economy Light & Power Company v . United States , 256 U . S . 113 , the element of public ( com com- com ) ¬ mercial navigation was also present . Like the Fox River , the Desplaines River was a great highway of commerce between the East and the West . In United States v . Holt State Bank , 270 U . S . 491 the element of public commercial navigation was present . It appeared in that case that Mud Lake was a part of a highway which extended to the Red |