n really first-class examples of more tangible returns for virtue
arise, they deserve recording. And this was one of them. For no sooner
had I formed the good resolve, and acted on it, venison or no venison,
than there came another soft _crack-crackle_ of dry twigs, and a second
brown animal appeared.

Bang!

The first shot hit just abaft the shoulder and the fine buck lay dead
before he knew his plight.

And if that was not immediate reward for virtue, I defy explanation!

CHAPTER IX

A Canoe on the Deschutes

There are larger rivers than the Deschutes, and wilder, and some better
for the canoe; many shelter more ducks, and a few more trout than does
Oregon's "River of Falls." But if there are any more beautiful or varied
I have yet to make their acquaintance.

The Columbia is, of course, a continental stream whose very mightiness
prevents any adequate comprehension of its entity; it must be enjoyed by
sections, in small potions. The Willamette is almost pastoral, a sterner
Western edition of the English Thames, with a score of rollicking
tributaries, rough as the mountains that breed them. The Sacramento,
like linked sweetness, is long drawn out, and the boisterous brooks of
the Sierras seem rather upland freshets than substantial rivers.
Superlatives are risky tools on the Pacific Slope where they appear
appropriate so often, but even so, with no apologies to the Pitt, the
Snake, the Williamson, the Rogue, and other neighbors, greater and
lesser, the Deschutes appeals to me as the richest of them all in
scenery and pleasurable attractions. From the snow banks of its birth to
the Columbia I have played companion to its waters on horseback, in
canoe, in automobile, driving, afoot, and on a train, and with
familiarity has come no contempt, but ever-increasing admiration.

The Deschutes is a river of many roles: it roars and rushes in
white-watered cascades, it sparkles gently in a myriad rippling rapids,
it is sedate as a mill pond; sometimes its banks are fields flanked with
flowers, sometimes steep slopes with black pools below and great trees
above, sometimes lined with alders or with the needle-carpeted forest
marching out to the very water's edge. Such it is for the first hundred
miles. Below, leaving the land of trees and meadows, it plunges for a
second century of miles through a spectacular canyon, walled in by
cliffs and abrupt hillsides, often rising almost sheer a thousand feet.
"The Grand C