pier.
Their lowest estimate in evidence is six miles an hour, their highest
twelve miles. This was the testimony of men who had made no experiment,
only conjecture. We have adopted the most exact means. The water runs
swiftest in high water and we have taken the point of nine feet above low
water. The water when the Afton was lost was seven feet above low water,
or at least a foot lower than our time. Brayton and his assistants timed
the instruments, the best instruments known in measuring currents. They
timed them under various circumstances and they found the current five
miles an hour and no more. They found that the water at the upper end ran
slower than five miles; that below it was swifter than five miles, but
that the average was five miles. Shall men who have taken no care, who
conjecture, some of whom speak of twenty miles an hour, be believed
against those who have had such a favorable and well improved opportunity?
They should not even qualify the result. Several men have given their
opinion as to the distance of the steamboat Carson, and I suppose if one
should go and measure that distance you would believe him in preference to
all of them.

"These measurements were made when the boat was not in the draw. It has
been ascertained what is the area of the cross section of this stream and
the area of the face of the piers, and the engineers say that the piers
being put there will increase the current proportionally as the space
is decreased. So with the boat in the draw. The depth of the channel was
twenty-two feet, the width one hundred and sixteen feet; multiply these
and you have the square-feet across the water of the draw, viz.: 2552
feet. The Afton was 35 feet wide and drew 5 feet, making a fourteenth
of the sum. Now, one-fourteenth of five miles is five-fourteenths of one
mile--about one third of a mile--the increase of the current. We will call
the current five and a half miles per hour. The next thing I will try to
prove is that the plaintiff's (?) boat had power to run six miles an hour
in that current. It had been testified that she was a strong, swift boat,
able to run eight miles an hour up stream in a current of four miles an
hour, and fifteen miles down stream. Strike the average and you will find
what is her average--about eleven and a half miles. Take the five and a
half miles which is the speed of the current in the draw and it leaves the
power of that boat in that draw at six miles an hour, 528