OCR Text |
Show Record back on the wide strip, where the river widens out. The wide stretches are all up and down the river. Near Bluff there is a mile or two where the river spreads out wide. At some places it is 500 feet wide. The wide- spreading has occurred since I went to 412 Bluff. When I went to Bluff there were not any such wide open spaces on the river. I have forded that wide space. I have forded that wide space when the water was not two or three feet deep. The river has been spread out wide enough so that it would not be that deep except on a ford. The ford was not the shallowest place. Many places it spreads all out and usually you do not try to ford there on account of the quick sand. In all of those places I have referred to as spreading out, the spreading out has occurred since my first arrival at Bluff and since the second big flood I have 413 spoken of. I have never gone through the river when the water at certain places in a ford did not come up to a horse's knees. That is about two feet. That is not the lowest I have ever seen it. Sometimes when it is scattered all out, it would be very shallow in some places, and when I would cross the channel it would be deeper. I would say the minimum depth has been, according to my best Judgment, about 2 feet on any regular ford. Kumen Jones, on examination by the special master, testified as follows: 414 I was among the first settlers at Bluff. When I crossed the Colorado River at Lees Ferry and crossed back on the North side of the San Juan River, there was an old Indian trail there, over 415 100 miles from the river, that went into Arizona. I was on the South side of the San Juan River and went to Bluff on the South side. I went through the Navajo Reservation and crossed the San Juan River] near Bluff. We followed an old Indian trail. When we left where Tuba is now, the trail was over 100 miles from the San Juan. We came Northeast toward the river. We did not see the river on this 416 first trip until we got to Bluff. At that time the Indians were crossing the river in boats. I don't think they went up and down |