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Show 236 flood started coming and washed all the farm lands and improvements out. After that all but three families moved away. R. 594- 595. He was on the range from the time he went there as a boy. The summer range commences back forty or fifty miles from the river in the vicinity of Bluff Mountain; in the winter the stock drifts back into the sand flats nearer the river. R. 595. He lived in Montezuma about three years, and his father then went down to the mouth of Chinle Wash, about nine miles below Bluff. Chinle Wash is on the one side of the river and the Comb Wash on the other. There he put up another store. His mother stayed at Montezuma. That was the year after the big flood. R. 596- 597. He never saw the Indians use boats. His father established a cable ferry across the river at Chinle Creek. Because of the erosive action of the water during storms and freshets and of the sands during the dry season, the river channel has a tendency to fill with sand. Sand fills the channel of the river a foot or two and has a tendency to throw the heavy body of water ad current against the banks at the sides. This undermines the banks and caves them in, filling the channel again with more sand and this throws the channel back to the other side, where the same process continues. Because of this erosive action, the ferry cable anchors where washed out and the ferry tipped over. " Q. Did you establish a ferry there at Chinle Creek? " A. yes, my father put in a cable boat across the river |