re are spirits in the
river, and it sounded like it.

"There was one Swede that the trapper told us of, who started through
the Cummins Rapids on a raft and was wrecked. He got ashore and walked
back to the settlements. He had only money enough left to buy one sack
of flour, then he started down the river again. From that day to this
he has never been heard of, and no one knows when or where he was
drowned.

"We passed one big boulder where the trapper said the name of another
Swede was cut on the rock by his friends who were wrecked with him
near by. I believe they were some miners trying to get out of this
country in boats. That man's body was never found, for the Columbia
never gives up her dead. We saw Leo's broken boat, as I told you; and
on the shores of Lake Timbasket we found the wrecks of two other
boats, washed down. You see, this wild country has no telegraph or
newspaper in it. When a man starts down the Big Bend of the Columbia
he leaves all sort of communication behind him. Many an unknown man
had started down this stream and never been seen again and never
missed--this river can hold its own mysteries."

"Well, tell us about this rapid just above here, Uncle Dick," went on
Jesse. "Wasn't it pretty bad?"

"The worst I ever saw, at least. When we stopped above the head of
that canyon the trapper told me where the trail was down here to the
Encampment, but of course I concluded to run on through if the others
did. Before we got that far I was pretty well impressed with the
Columbia, myself. When we landed at the head of Upper Death Canyon I
don't believe any of us were very sure that our boat would go through.
No one was talking very much, I'll promise you that.

"The worst part of that long stretch of bad water of the Rock Canyon
can't be more than four or five miles in all, and there isn't a foot
of good water in the whole distance, as I remember it. Of course, the
worst is the Giant Eddy--it lies just over there, beyond the edge of
the hill from us. In there the water runs three different ways all at
once. There is no boat on earth can go up this river through the Giant
Eddy, and lucky enough is the one which comes down through it.

"You see, once you get in there, you can't get either up again or out
on either side--the rock walls come square down to the river, which
boils down through a narrow, crooked gorge. It is like a big letter Z,
with all the flood of the Columbia pouring through the bent l