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Show Record 2453 which to make the trip. We did not make much progress at first; the propeller would kick all the water out of the tunnel and the boat would settle on the sand; we would get off, drift back a ways, and in a minute's time would drift back as much as you could make going forward in fifteen minutes. I imagine the draft of the boat was twelve inches loaded. We carried a line ashore 2454 to get over a bar sometimes four or five times in a day. On the first trip we only went nine miles in two days. Then we started with a survey party and moved from day to day up the river, a few miles each day. We hauled supplies to the Fowler camp, where we would stay a day or two and then go up the river and move the camp two or three miles to another place. Maybe once a week we would come back down to Lee's Ferry to bring the reports out and 2456 would take some supplies and mail back up to Mr. Fowler. I don't know exactly how many trips we made the first season. I believe we went up as far as Mile 68, which is at the mouth of Bridge Canyon. I do not think we crossed the Arizona- Utah line more than six or eight times. Before that time I had had three years steam-boating experience on the Coeur d' Alene lake and also on the St. Joe and St. Mary's River in the same state. I have operated stern wheel boats and propeller boats on a river. On the Colorado River a flood would usually take out the troublesome bars - a majority of the bars; we found the best going for a few days 2457 after the flood had passed. When we made our first trip, about the first of August, the water was at low stage. Then there would be a thunder shower and a flood would run by, and for the 2458 next five days or week the channel would be fairly clean. After that time we would have to pick our way through bars and sometimes would find enough water where we could get our boat off without pushing. We could only make one or two miles per hour 2459 upstream. The channel of the river was never the same. We would make a trip one week and the next week would find dozens of bars |