Show FERRYMAN HAS A WORD Ri oVILLE lincoln co sept 21 1893 1898 dear sir an article in a recent issue of your paper with prominent relating to the difficulties of ariz na travel sand and rooks and little water lass has been sent to me and requires a short abort review and the same publicity inasmuch as the writer of that article is a man whose statement should and probably will command respectful notice when made in his normal state it la Is due to him und nd the public to say that according to hla his own showing as I 1 view its it he be was at the time or of his hie writing writ ios in au an abnormal 1 und ind dreamy state slate on the trip he so ao romantically depicts he left this place for gold basin after two hours rest with a team he himself stated was exhausted twenty five miles behind at st thomas and would not do to venture the ordinary road and would hence bence prefer a now new track on which two waterlog watering places could be hail had near the road which all in all is leas ian than forty miles and can easily be driven over with a fresh team in a day the first watering place twelve miles southeast where the be joau comes with in two miles of the great river he did not 0 choose b 0 a to go to at all ally the second one twenty miles on the road and one mile off he did not drive to but carried a barrel of water on the horse which must have helped the horse boree a good deal and on all that fearful dederer dei road there was mom no timoor time or place where he was more than nine miles from water it to is safe to say that if he ha I 1 taken the road be recommends from st george miles which he be lid did not see it would have seemed miles if indeed he could have made it at gill all As to the character of the roads there are in fact no roads in all this region such as northern utah affords and from the nature of the terrain they cannot be made really good but the distances are a matter of measurement and quite easily ascertained an exhausted team and an anxious driver are not reliable rions when a party of california emigrants perished in 1848 in death valley two survivors stated fated that they traveled ten to fifteen miles a day whereas recent measurements between their camps show that they made from one and i a half balf to three miles a day any stra strange stretch of country especially if without water to le always overestimated it does not need to be a sahara bahara or a gobi the longest waterless stretch on this oldest road is IB between here and mountain springs forty two miles by railroad survey mutually called forty five and fresh teams often drive over it in a day but tired and loaded teams need two or more days day a and m must carry water or do without recently the now new mining camp at while hills hille thirty miles from the river and a little to the left of the road furnishes a chance lobance to lessen ledeen the dry stretch of 12 miles and that camp bau bars also made a now new road to hackberry hack berry greatly lessening leise the distance to that point which most moat utah travelers went to touch to reach conveniently the various settlements of eastern arizona in a choice of several bowis from here southward south ward on which I 1 have done many hun bun red dollars worth ot of improvement work without help and which still need much more I 1 am of course expected to tell the chances of 01 each and be responsible for each as well as an for all the overloads the exhausted teams the lack of barrels the wilful going off the plain road into the mountains in search learch of springs and all the other native contrariness often shown by travelers A lovely position surely in a somewhat extensive exten eive experience 1 I have found it a very unthankful task to direct travelers aud and am doing as little as an possible at it on the whole and in the course of years travel gravitates where the least serious obstacles are found thus far for a quarter of a century the travel irom nevada eastern oregon idaho and southern utah to arizona has gone over the be river here and below following the natural passes and lines of drainage as afford ing the best chances for heavy team beame most water feed and chances of supply while the bulk of the northern and utah travel has gone above the grand canyon over lees ferry and kept the highland ridges of arizona even eren if the ferry busi business teas was my only or main resource which it Js is not by any means I 1 would not make any great efforts to influence the course ol of travel but bat would say let people go where they think best so long as an no misdirection is in attempted or serious seri ms misrepresents eions made the whole country often plenty of hardship without it yours respectfully |