38o REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



Buffalo Pipe Line Co. vs. N. Y., L. E. & W. R. R. Co., lo Abb., N. C, 107; 



Wadsworth vs. Smith, 2 Fairchilds, 278, 280; 



Brown vs. Chadbourne, 31 Maine, 9; 



Knox vs. Challoner, 42 Maine, 150; 



Brown vs. Black, 43 Maine, 443 ; 



Garrish vs. Brown, 51 Maine, 256. 



Anyone using such highway has, under the common law, the right of removing boulders or 

 obstructions from the navigable channel of the river. 

 Sec. 71, Lewis on Eminent Domain; 

 Sec. 80, Mills on Eminent Domain ; 

 2 Am. and Eng. Ency. of Law, page 470 ; 



16 Am. and Eng. Ency. of Law, pages 264, 265, and cases cited; 

 Washburn on Easements, page 481 ; 

 Sec. 615, Gould on Waters; 

 Yates vs. Judd, 188 Wis., 118; 

 Brackson vs. Bresslee, 64, III, 488 ; 

 Sec. 163, Angel on Water Courses, and cases cited ; 



Thompson vs. Androscoggin Improvement Co., 54 N. H., 545, page 548; 

 See also 51 Maine, page 264, id. 256; 

 Slayter vs. Fox, 5 Hun., 544. 

 (l.) Actio)i of the State relative to the Beaver River previous to the reserzioir legislation. 

 The Beaver River was by the Legislature of the State of New York early declared to be a public 

 highway for the purpose of floating logs. (Laws 1853, Chapter 643.) 



In 1864, $10,000 was appropriated and subsequently spent by the State in improving the rafting 

 channel of the Beaver River. (Laws 1864, Chapter 233.) 



Section i (Laws 1864, Chapter 233) appropriates the sum of $10,000 — $5,000 to be spent in 

 1864 and $5,000 to be spent in 1S65 — for the purpose of clearing and improving the rafting channel 

 of the Beaver River. 



Section 2 provides that said $10,000 shall be expended under the direction of John W. Wright, 

 Charles W. Smith and Nelson Rulison, Commissioners. 



Section 3 provides and regulates the fees of the Commissioners. 



Section 4 is as follows: " The Canal Board are directed and required to levy and collect the same 

 tolls upon the river hereby to be improved as are now levied and collected upon the several canals of 

 this State upon all property and boats passing up and down the same." 



WILLIAM GIBBONS, at present a farmer, and for twenty-five years previous a practical lumber- 

 man, until he lost his arm and was forced to retire from the lumber business, and an experienced log 

 driver and improver of streams preparatory to driving them, testified that Nelson Rulison, John 

 Wright and Charles W. Smith, named in the act of 1864, Chapter 258, are all dead; that in 1864 

 Gibbons had charge of the work on the Beaver River for the State under the above-named Commis- 

 sioners ; that work was commenced at the mouth of Sunday Creek, six or seven miles below the 

 present State dam at Stillwater, and from there proceeded up stream to Lake Lila ; and that the 

 boulders in the floatable channel were blasted out so as to make a channel in the Beaver River from 

 the entrance of Sunday Creek up through to the dam at Stillwater, from sixteen to twenty feet wide, 

 the narrowest place being sixteen feet, the intention being to give room so that a thirteen- foot log 

 could swing around and pass through. 



A bend was cut in the Beaver River above the dam at the place known as the Dutch Gap, and a 

 dam built at Lake Lila or Smith's Lake. The river from Lake Lila down to Sunday Creek was left 

 in a good, feasible condition for floating logs. $5,000, one half the appropriation, was expended the 

 first year under Gibbons' direction. 



WILLIAM BRIGGS, of Beaver Falls, Lewis County, N. Y., a farmer, and who was a log driver 

 nine or ten seasons on the Beaver River, testified that he worked for the State on the Beaver River in 



