The record-union., 1896-01-02
THE SEIZER Is BACK HERE AGAIN.
Over Eight Hundred Snags Taken Out
of the River
Plenty of the Appropriation Still Left
to Pay for the Work for Two
More Years.

The Government snag-boat SeiZer re-
turned on Tuesday night from the San
Joaquin River, after a trip of between
five and six months on that and the
Sacramento Rivers.
1t left here on July 24th, rather late
in the season. having been delayed by
repairs TO its boilers, and spent the time
between that and November 26th in
snagging and building wing dams be-
tween here and Red Bluff.
In conversation with a Record
Union" reporter yesterday, Lieutenant
De Merritt, the genial officer who COM
mands the Seizer, said that the sea-
sons work has left the river navigable
from here to Red Bluff and in excellent
condition. Most of the work has been
done above Colusa No new bars have
formed; in fact, a new bar is not often
formed, although a bar will often move
down stream few hundred feet or
yards, leaving plenty of water where it
formerly was Once in while they are
entirely obliterated, but this very sell
dom happens About 800 snags in all
were taken out of the river. Two wing
dams were built above Tehama, and
three between Tehama and Chico, to
mel.
After November 26th the Seizer went
around into the San Joaquin, where the
work it engaged in was mostly that of
taking out trees Most of the work done
on the Mokelumne was dredging. The
channel at New Hope Landing was
deepened, and piece of the bank taken
off,
Although the inhabitants along the
river above Red Bluff are very anxious
to have it put into navigable condition,
no work was done on it, for the reason
that the Government engineers are of
the opinion that the enormous amount
of money required to do it would be en-
tirely disproportionate to the benefit to
be derived from it, at least, at present.
AS the river is ascended, sand gives
way to gravel, gravel to cobbles, these
in turn to bowlders-some of them of
immense size-and also rapids and
shoals make their appearance.
Lieutenant De Merritt has photo
graphs of different places above Red
Bluff, which give good idea of some
of the difficulties of navigation At
Iron Canyon, nine miles above, the river
rushes through between two walls of
solid rock for more than mile. At
one place the walls are only thirty
seven feet apart, and as the boats at
present running to this city have
breadth of beam of thirty-four feet, it
is easy to imagine how much room
they would have to spare when coming
down the current at the rate of ten or
twelve miles an hour, while powders
are interspersed among the rapids.
There is fall of about ten feet to the
mile below there, but it is not uniform,
there being long reaches of level water,
and again it rushes over falls of two to
five feet.
A large sum of money was appropri-
ated by Congress some years ago for
the work to be done on the river, most
of which was to be expended on wing
dams and dredging, but since that time
ranyS of the bars have disappeared,
and there is no use of expending it so.
In his last report Hajor Heuer the
engineer in charge of the work, said
that not dollar need be appropriated
for improving the rivers. There still re-
mains from the former appropriation
large sum, possibly about $4,000. At
all events, it is calculated to be sutti-
cient to carry on the work for two years
to come in building wing-dams and
other work. The expenses of the snag-
boat when in use are over $4,000
month. It will now lie still until next
summer, when the river falls again.