narration of these facts appear beside their
actual realization in a small canoe manned by Indians!) Let us see if we
can picture one of these many scenes. There sounds ahead a roar of
falling water, and we see, upon rounding some pine-clad island or ledge
of rock, a tumbling mass of foam and spray studded with projecting rocks
and flanked by dark wooded shores; above we can see nothing, but below,
the waters, maddened by their wild rush amidst the rocks, surge and leap
in angry whirlpools. It is as wild a scene of crag and wood and water as
the eye can gaze upon, but we look upon it not for its beauty, because
there is no time for that, but because it is an enemy that must be
conquered.

Now mark how these Indians steal upon this enemy before he is aware of
it. The immense volume of water, escaping from the eddies and whirlpools
at the foot of the fall, rushes on in a majestic sweep into calmer
water; this rush produces along the shores of the river a counter- or
back-current which flows up sometimes close to the foot of the fall;
along this back-water the canoe is carefully steered, being often
not six feet from the opposing rush in the central river; but the
back-current in turn ends in a whirlpool, and the canoe, if it followed
this back-current, would inevitably end in the same place. For a minute
there is no paddling, the bow-paddle and the steersman alone keeping the
boat in her proper direction as she drifts rapidly up the current. Among
the crew not a word is spoken, but every man knows what he has to do,
and will be ready when the moment comes; and now the moment has come,
for on one side there foams along a mad surge of water, and on the other
the angry whirlpool twists and turns in smooth hollowing curves round an
axis of air, whirling round it with a strength that would snap our birch
bark into fragments, and suck us down into the great depths below. All
that can be gained by the back-current has been gained, and now it is
time to quit it; but where? for there is often only the choice of the
whirlpool or the central river. Just on the very edge of the eddy there
is one loud shout given by the bow-paddle, and the canoe shoots full
into the centre of the boiling flood, driven by the united strength of
the entire crew; the men work for their very lives, and the boat breasts
across the river, with her head turned full towards the falls; the
waters foam and dash about her, the waves leap high over the gunwale,
t