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Show 891 " Q. How long a period were you there? " A. We started drilling in the first part 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 increase quantities of driftwood; 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 notion 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 out 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. [ R. 2104.] " I made arrangements for Mr. Hiser, the drill foreman, to line the outfit back up over the hole; we had lost about ninety feet of drill rods and casing that we wanted to re-cover if possible in order to resume operations, and I went |
