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Show 4083 Sawyer- D 2104 Q How long a period were you there? A We started drilling in the first party of September, and came out again in the first part of November. Q What was the occasion of ceasing drilling down there? A Why, one Sunday morning, while there were just a few of us in camp, we had about an eight- foot rise, a sudden rise in the Grand, accompanied by immense quantities of driftwood; this driftwood came down so thick a chicken could nearly walk across that river dry shod. We had difficulties in getting over to the barge, the drill barge, in a row boat, but by lots of action we got ahead of the driftwood a little and came in below it and got up to the barge. This driftwood accumulated on the anchor ropes of the barge so rapidly we couldn't keep them clean, and it was about to sink the barge, so I got a shore line, an inch line ashore around a tree and cut the two front anchor lines with an axe, and as we swung around and hit the shore I had a second man with another line ready; it snapped the first shore line; the second one held long enough to swing us around to a projecting rock there which shunted the driftwood down, otherwise I imagine the outfit would have been carried over the rapids, which were about a mile or a mile and a half below us, the first rapids of Cataract canyon. |