ain on a great rough raft of ice that will
test their muscles and their skill before they get across, and drift
them a quarter of a mile or so up-stream while they are doing it.

Up-stream, did I say? Yes, for there is this odd thing about the St.
Lawrence, even at Quebec, that its current streams up and down, up and
down, as the tide changes. For seven hours the river conquers the tide,
and the water runs down to sea. Then for five hours the tide conquers
the river, and the water runs up from the sea. So now, after all their
toiling, they are actually further from home than when they started.
They should have set out just before the turn of tide (that was their
plan), but they waited until just after the turn, and will pay for the
delay and their yarn spinning with an hour more of this ice-fighting
than they need have had--and an hour out there is a long, long time.

Even here, on the bank, much less than an hour is enough of time. The
cold grows piercing. The day is drawing to a close. The sky is dull. The
river grinds on with its grayish burden. On the heights of Levis,
opposite, some lights of early evening break out. There also pilots
live, Indians come from an Indian village down the river, where they
make the peerless birch canoes. All along this grand St. Lawrence live
men whose business it is to face unusual perils, whose nerve fails them
not, whether paddling some frail bark through furious rapids or guiding
a steamboat down a raging torrent, with many lives in their keeping.

We must see more of these men, and watch them at their work. We must see
the Iroquois pilots at their reservation near Montreal, the lads Lord
Wolseley took with him up the Nile to brave its cataracts, when the
English set out, in 1884, to bring relief to Gordon. We must see "Big
John," famous now for years as wheelsman of the great excursion boats
that shoot the rage of waters at Lachine. We must see the raftsmen, too,
and--ah, but it is cold here!--let us climb the cliff again and find
some shelter.

III

NOW WE WATCH THE MEN WHO SHOOT THE FURIOUS RAPIDS AT LACHINE

WOULD you see the most skilful pilots in the world, men who know all the
tricks with ocean liners and the Indian tricks as well, who fight the
rush of seventy-foot tides in the Bay of Fundy, or drive their frail
canoes through furious gorges, or coolly turn the nose of a thousand-ton
steamboat into the white jaws of rock-split rapids where a yard either
way or