OCR Text |
Show Record The rising and falling water would destroy a sand bar one day and build one up in another place. You never knew just exactly where the current was going to be; sometimes in a few hours any little eddy or obstruction would immediately start the silt to settle and deposit and a bar would from. Anything that would take the obstruction out would cause the bar to crumble very fast, and you would have a channel in a short time. By " any little ob-struction" I mean a large tree or anything that would make a swirl or eddy. In September and October the water was usually stationary and low from then on until spring, except for rains that caused it to rise. In November and December the water was very low as a rule. Sometimes it was nearly covered with ice, except in the swift water. January was very similar to November and December. In February and March the country began to warm up and as a rule we had a little better stage of water. We stopped our placer mining when high water stopped us, and we had to stop in extreme low water and cold weather. Sometimes we would stop for a week and sometimes for a couple of months. At the time I was there I did not see any power boats on the river. While I was there most of the miners used small flat bottomed, home- made boats. They used the boats to go yo and down the river for prospecting purposes. While I was there I made placer locations for myself and 3577 I kept them up. My party and I worked the bars principally between the upper Pickaboo and Good Hope. Our work was always above high water mark. We never worked the river bed itself. We prospected 3578 it some. The water was never over the top of the Pickaboo and Good Hope bars while I was there. They are pretty high bars. During the time I was in that section I met the Stanton party, the Brown party and the Best party that had come down the river in boats from Greenriver, Utah. Those were not the only partie |