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Show SAN JUAN IS A RIVER OP MUD San Juan River, called Pawhuska (mad water) by the Navajo Indians who live nearby, is not only one of the main tributaries of the Colorado but is probably the chief contributor of silt to it. The swiftly flowing San Juan never gets clear, and sometimes it carries three times as much silt as water. To take a bath in the river is merely to substitute one kind of dirt for another. Furthermore, a soap that floats is recommended for use in the San Juan; a soap that sinks will be invisible it can never be found. At times the river runs with a smooth, oily movement like that of molten metal, so red and so viscous is it with silt. At such times the fish become exhausted and flounder on the surface, their dorsal fins projecting projec-ting into the air. Then the fisherman fisher-man needs only to arm himself with a club and wade coutiously into the mud to catch a fish with bare hands arter he has stunned it with a blow. The San Juan was explored a few years ago by a party of engineers of the Department of the Interior, who descended it by boat and mapped its deep, winding, closewalled canyons to determine the feasibility of certain proposed power and storage projects. The voyage was hazardous, rapids that made portages necessary were numerous, and long stretches of shallow water compelled the members of the party to wade quicksands for miles and to drag the boats. A report recently issued by the Geological Survey giving the results of the trip described most of that part of San Juan River that lies in Utah, including its canyon, as well as the nearly uninhabited adjacent arid country, which is rugged and difficult diffi-cult of access. The report was prepared pre-pared by Hugh D. Miser and is publi-lished publi-lished as the Survey's Water-Supply Paper 538, entitled "The San Juan Canyon, southeastern Utah a geographic geogra-phic and hyrographic reconnaissance." |