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Show Record water we tried to use the boat and did use the boat if river conditions were favorable, such as not too high or too low water. If we got a nice wind we would start up the river and sail as far as we could and sometimes would get part of the way and then walk the rest of the way. Resuming his direct examination Frank Bennett testified: We would only once in a while make trips between the Olympia and California Bars; some times we would go up and work a few days and then come back again. Aside from sail and oars as a 3182 method of getting boats up there, I have had three different motor boats on the river, but that was after I worked the California Bar. We have towed boats up there, and aside from wind, the towing was considered the easiest way of getting up where we could walk along the beach; it is easier than rowing. I tried a motor boat somewhere about 1902. I had built that boat, which was of white cedar and twenty- six feet long, with a six foot beam and flat bottom, at Hite. I had one of the first automobile engines built. It was a double cylinder engine built in Denver and used by an oil company; they tried to construct it as an automobile engine. I tried to 3183 use it going up the river but I never got any farther up than Good Hope Bar with it; that was a distance of about fourteen miles. I couldn't run the Good Hope Rapid with it. It had a stern shell on it and first the sprocket chain broke and let me back down; I tried several times and got it up to the top of the rapids but did not have power enough to go any farther. Eventually the sprocket chain broke and dropped in the river and was lost. The rapids I just referred to are at Good Hope Bar, about eighteen miles below Hite; it is quite a rapid but not a very swift rapid. I also tried a side wheel on this boat but it didn't work quite as well as the stern wheel. In going upstream you tried to hug the shore as near as you can; on account of swift water one side would catch on the rocks and the other would be out in the swift water, so I couldn't hold my boat, which had a tendency to turn around with |
