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Show Record didn't operate at the Meskin Bar very long, and after leaving there continued on up the river to the Moqui Bar, the little Giant and the bars along Hall's Creek. Meskin and I brought our 3290 small boat up with us. There were no difficulties on the upstream trip any more than just towing the boat and poling it along; no serious difficulties. In the winter of 1898 I went down the river from the mouth of Hanson Creek to Klondyke Bar, located below the San Juan River. We built two big boats and Hanson Creek, each about fourteen feet wide and eighteen or twenty feet long. One of the boats was a box shape and I put a nose on the other one. I fastened the two boats together, one behind the other, so they 3291 would go over the rapids and things like that in better form. I had five four- horse loads of supplies and horse- feed that I loaded in those boats, and I also loaded the scrapers and machinery into the boats at Moqui Bar, so that the boats drew about a foot of water. I took the trip I have last been speaking of in January, 1818, and when I got down to Little Giant Bar, which is below Hall's Crossing, I left the boats in charge of a man named Bill Hay, who had ten men with him. I took the horses and with another man went to Hole- in- the- Rock, where I was to meet the boats but the boats weren't there. Next day I went across the river where some fellows had left a boat to see where I could find a way out to take the horses to Klondyke Bar down by Navajo Fall below the 3292 San Juan River. We looked up the river and could see the ice and thought we would find the boats up above the ice. The river was frozen pretty much solid up to where it cuts through the San Rafael swell at Rincon. Next morning we went up to the end of 3293 a rapid there where the ice had clogged up forty feet high and had backed up the river for a mile and a half. We finally got up to Shock Bar and swam the river over to the island above that bar, built a raft and crossed over and walked up to Anderson Bar where 3294 our boats were. In going over Little Giant Rapid, the near boat, which was loaded the heaviest, must have had a hole broken in it. |