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Show The steamers make monthly trips to Fort Mohave, the larger ones most of the year, and a smaller one, built especially for low-water navigation, during the rest of the year. The mills at the mouth of the Black Canyon do not run regularly from various causes, scarcity of fuel being one, which would be obviated by river navigation. Provisions are taken to these mines by scows towed along the river banks by Indians with ropes, making trips as often as once a week. Besides these points there are large salt mines up the Virgin River, but these are not being worked at present. Below the Needles there is a very little of the canyon formation, the Mohave Canyon being the principal one. Even in these canyons the river is shallow in places and bars are formed on which we sometimes ran aground in our skiff. The greater part of the river is flat, and varies from one-fourth to 1 mile in width, and is a succession of bars continually forming and then cutting away and reforming in other places, causing the channel to change from one side to the other, and at times the main channel would be straight across the river bed for a mile, then run a few hundred yards along the bank, and turn again running across in the opposite direction. The water over these bars is so shallow that in many places our skiff was aground and required considerable effort to get it off. Over this part of the river the steamers make trips at least once a month. The only points to be supplied are the Mohave Indian Reservation, about 80 miles below the Needles, and some mining camps lower down on the river, the principal one being Ehrenberg, about 120 miles from Yuma. These |