Here at the bridge, which was a hundred feet above the river, was a dredge, and an old flat-bottomed steamboat, a relic of a few years past, before the government built the Laguna dam above Yuma, and condemned the Colorado as a navigable stream.  Those were the days which the Colorado steamboat men recall with as much fond remembrance as the old-time boatmen of the Mississippi remember their palmy days.

In spite of the fact that the boats were flat-bottomed and small, it was real steamboating of an exciting nature at least.  At times they beat up against the current as far as the mouth of the Rio Virgin.  In low water the channels shifted back and forth first choked with sand on one side of the stream, then on the other.  While the total fall from Fort Mojave, a few miles above Needles, to the Gulf is only 525 feet, considerable of that fall came in short sections, first with a swift descent, then in a quiet stretch.  Even in the high-water stage I was finding some such places.

Parker stood a mile back from the river, on top of the level gravelly earth which stretched for miles on either side of the river clear to the mountains.  This earth and gravel mixture was so firmly packed that even the cactus had a scant foothold.  The town interested me for one reason only, this being, that I could get my meals for the evening and the following morning, instead of having to cook them myself.  After I had eaten them, however, there was a question in my mind if my own cooking, bad as it was, would not have answered the purpose just as well.  The place was a new railroad town on an Indian reservation, a town of great expectations, somewhat deferred.

It was not as interesting to me as my next stop at Ahrenburg, some fifty miles below Parker.  This place while nothing but a collection of dilapidated adobe buildings, had an air of romance about it which was missing in the newer town.  Ahrenburg had seen its day.  Many years ago it was a busy mining camp, and the hope is entertained by the faithful who still reside in its picturesque adobe homes that it will come back with renewed vigour.  Here at Ahrenburg I met a character who added greatly to the interest of my stay.  He was a gigantic, raw-boned Frenchman, at that time engaged in the construction of a motor boat; but a miner, a sailor, and a soldier of fortune in many ways, one who had pried into many of the hidden corners of the country and had a graphic way of describing what he had seen.  I was his guest until late that night, and was entertained royally on what humble fare he had to offer.  We both intended to renew our acquaintance in the morning, but some prowling Mexicans near my boat, croaking frogs, and swarms of mosquitos gave me a restless night.  With the first glimmer of daylight I was up, and half an hour later I was away on the flood.