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Show Record I made another trip, when Virgil had his back hurt. A fellow named Newell was the pilot. I went along with him. He was one of the operators of the barge. He run the boat; but Virgil was the Captain of that boat generally and did practically all of the 5020 handling of it. On those portions of the Colorado River that I have become familiar with, the channel is very near in the same place all the time, only just after the heavy rains in the fall that come in the side canyons, bringing in the silt, the channel would become changed there temporally for a week or ten days. It would eventually get right back in the same channel again. At all places in the river, other than at the places and in the immediate vicinity of places where said washes come in, and at all times except the occasion of floods coming down the side washes, I did not observe any change of channels of instability of channels, to speak of. It was practically the same. At those places where side washes are located, and following heavy rains that would bring silt and anything else down into the Colorado, the river would clean that out in a few days. 5021 It would do its own house cleaning there. After there had been a big flood and a wash in one or any of the canyons, we would have some difficult at the mouth of that canyon in locating a channel and occasionally be bothered by a sand bar at that point on the first trip. After the first trip at such places we would have very little difficulty, and in a week or ten days the river would wash the silt and debris down and the place would be restored to normal by the river itself. It was a part of my business to keep track of the running of the boats and I endeavored to perform that duty faithfully. 5022 My bother had been living there in Moab before we started to operate the boats. Virgil was her youngest son. She took con- 5023 siderable pride in Virgil and his doings. She kept a diary of the boat trips that Virgil made. I would see my mother three or four times a week while she was living there, and I saw that diary and |