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Show 597 Hyde- D castle, and some sheep, and us boys run them. Q At the time you went in there did the Indians use any boats? A No, I never see an Indian have a boat. Q Did you establish a ferry there at Chinle creek? A Yes, my father put in a cable boat across the river there. We expected every day, from reports and some paper talk, to have a railroad in there right away, a short out to California. He put in a cable boat across the river at the mouth of Comb wash, and put a big, fist- bottom boat there. The Indians rode that with their loads on their ponies, set there, fifteen or twenty of them at a time, and came over. A couple of years afterwards the rains come and kept cutting the bottoms more; the floods drifted in; you see, that country is a sandstone country. The LaPlata is the top formation of that country between the base of the Chuckawala mountain and the mouth of Chinle wash; there the lime is raised again in the sandstone formation; on both sides of the river you have that fine drift sand on it. The heavy rain storms in the country there washes gutters through it, little washes ten or twelve feet deep; then we have a dry season, and the wind whips that and blows the sand along the ground like frozen snow; it fills these little gulches and washes all full of that fine sand. A rain comes and washes that into the river, carries it right down, works the river plumb full of it. That helped to out the bottoms out more than anything; helped to out the big cottonwood bottoms out. 2565 |