Emery woke me the next morning to report that the river had risen about six feet; and that my boat—­rolled out on the sand but left untied—­was just on the Point of going out with the water.  It had proven fortunate for us all Emery was a light sleeper!  There was no travelling this day, as the boat had to be repaired.  Emery, being the ship’s carpenter, set to work at once, while Jimmy and I stretched our ropes back and forth, and hung up the wet clothes.  Then we built a number of fires underneath and soon had our belongings in a steam.  Things were beginning to look cheerful again.  The rain stopped, too, for a time at least.

A little later Jimmy ran into camp with a fish which he had caught with his hands.  It was of the kind commonly called the bony-tail or humpback or buffalo-fish, a peculiar species found in many of the rivers of the Southwest.  It is distinguished by a small flat head with a hump directly behind it; the end of the body being round, very slender, and equipped with large tail-fins.  This specimen was about sixteen inches long, the usual length for a full-grown fish of this species.

Now for a fish story!  On going down to the river we found a great many fish swimming in a small whirlpool, evidently trying to escape from the thick, slimy mud which was carried in the water.  In a half-hour we secured fourteen fish, killing most of them with our oars.  There were suckers and one catfish in the lot.  You can judge for yourself how thick the water was, that such mudfishes as these should have been choked to helplessness.  Our captured fish were given a bath in a bucket of rain-water, and we had a fish dinner.

In the afternoon we made a test of the water from the river, and found that it contained 20 per cent of an alkaline silt.  When we had to use this water, we bruised the leaf of a prickly pear cactus, and placed it in a bucket of water.  This method, repeated two or three times, usually clears the muddiest water.  We also dug holes in the sand at the side of the river.  The water, filtering through the sand, was often clear enough to develop the tests we made with our films.

Jimmy continued to feel downhearted; and this afternoon he told us his story.  Our surmise about his being homesick was correct, but it was a little more than that.  He had an invalid mother, it seemed, and, aided by an older brother, he had always looked after the needs of the family.  When the proposition of making the river trip came up, serious objections were raised by the family; but when the transportation arrived he had determined to go, in spite of their objections.  Now he feared that his mother would not live, or that we would be wrecked, and he would not know where to turn, or what to do.  No wonder he felt blue!

All we could do was to promise to help him leave the river at the very first opportunity.  This would quite likely be at Jensen, Utah, still fifty miles farther downstream.