a second's doubt would mean destruction, or hitch long hawsers to
a log raft big as a city block (the lumber in a single raft may be worth
a hundred thousand dollars), and swing her down a tumbling waterway
hundreds of miles, with a peril in every one, and land her safe? If you
would see all this, go to the wonderful St. Lawrence, which sweeps in
wide and troubled reaches from the Great Lakes to the sea.

Of course I do not mean that any one man can do all these things,--that
would be asking too much,--but each in his own line, half-breed or
Indian or fur-bundled voyageur, has such quickness of eye, such surety
of hand, that you will be glad to watch the rafters on their rafts, and
ask no more of them, or the canoeists at their paddles, or the big-craft
pilots at their wheels.

Let us stand on the long iron bridge that spans the St. Lawrence just
above Montreal, the very place to study the river as it narrows and
runs swifter for its smashing plunge through yonder rapids to the east,
the dreaded Lachine Rapids, whose snarling teeth flash white in the sun.
Look down into the greenish rush, and see how the waters hurl past these
good stone piers, sharp-pointed up-stream against the tearing of winter
ice! Here goes the torrent of Niagara and the inland ocean of Superior
and Erie and Ontario, all crushed into a funnel of land by this big
island at the left that blocks the flow, and gorged by the in-pour of
the Ottawa a few miles back that brings down the floods of southern
Canada. As fast as a horse can gallop runs the river here, and faster
and faster it goes as the long slant takes it, ten, twelve, fourteen
miles an hour (which is something for a river), until a dozen islands
strewn across the funnel's lower end goad the rapids to their greatest
rage. Here is where they kill. Then suddenly all is quiet, and the
river, spreading to a triple width, rests, after its madness, in
Montreal's placid harbor.

[Illustration: "BIG JOHN" STEERING A BOAT THROUGH THE LACHINE RAPIDS.]

Standing here, I think of my first experience in shooting these rapids
(it was on one of the large river boats), and I must confess that it
gave me no very thrilling sense of danger. There were two or three
plunges, to be sure, at the steepest part, and a little swaying or
lurching, but, so far as movement goes, nothing to disturb one
accustomed to the vicissitudes of, say, ordinary trolley-car navigation.
However, when I came to the reason of this f