flung
into a turnip--_but weren't_! The thought is truly appalling--isn't it?
The avoidance of that one awful possibility is enough to make any man
feel lucky all his life. It's such fun to awaken in the morning with all
your legs and arms and eyes and ears about you, waiting to be used
again! So strong was this thought in me when we cast off, that even the
memory of Bill's amateurish pancakes couldn't keep back the whistle.

The current of the Black Bluffs Rapids whisked us from the bank with a
giddy speed, spun us about a right-angled bend, and landed us in a long
quiet lake. Contrary to the average opinion, the Upper Missouri is
merely a succession of lakes and rapids. In the low-water season, this
statement should be italicised. When you are pushing down with the power
of your arms alone the rapids show you how fast you want to go, and the
lakes show you that you can't go that fast. For the teaching of
patience, the arrangement is admirable. But when head winds blow, a
three-mile reach means about a two-hour fight.

This being a very invigorating morning, however, the engine decided to
take a constitutional. It ran. Below the mouth of the Marias River,
twenty minutes later, we grounded on Archer's Bar and shut down. After
dragging her off the gravel, we discovered that the engine wished to
sleep. No amount of cranking could arouse it. Now and then it would say
"_squash_," feebly rolling its wheel a revolution or two--like a
sleepy-head brushing off a fly with a languid hand.

A light breeze had sprung up out of the west. The stream ran east and
northeast. We hastily rigged a tarp on a pair of oars spliced for a
mast, and proceeded at a care-free pace. The light breeze ruffled the
surface of the slow stream;

"----yet still the sail made on
A pleasant noise till noon."

In the lazy heat of the mounting sun, tempered by the cool river
draught, the yellow sandstone bluffs, whimsically decorated with sparse
patches of greenery, seemed to waver as though seen through shimmering
silken gauze. And over it all was the hush of a dream, except when, in a
spasmodic freshening of the breeze, the rude mast creaked and a sleepy
watery murmur grew up for a moment at the wake.

Now and then at a break in the bluffs, where a little coulee entered the
stream, the gray masses of the bull-berry bushes lifted like smoke, and
from them, flame-like, flashed the vivid scarlet of the berry-clusters,
smiting the general dre