the better known portions.

[Illustration: _The beginning of the canon, Middle Fork of the Flathead
River_]

To check a boat in such a current seemed impossible. But we needed food.
We were tired and cold, and we had a long afternoon's work still before
us.

At last, by tremendous effort and great skill, the boatmen made the
landing. It was the college boy who had clambered down the cliff and
brought the lunch, and it was he who caught the boats as they were
whirling by. We had to cling like limpets--whatever a limpet is--to the
edge, and work our way over to where there was room to sit down.

It reminded the Head of Roosevelt's expression about peace raging in
Mexico. He considered that enjoyment was raging here.

Nevertheless, we ate. We made the inevitable cocoa, warmed beans, ate a
part of the great cheese purchased the day before, and, with gingersnaps
and canned fruit, managed to eke out a frugal repast. And shrieked our
words over the roar of the river.

It was here that the boats were roped down. Critical examination and
long debate with the boatmen showed no way through. On the far side,
under the towering cliff, was an opening in the rocks through which the
river boiled in a drop of twenty feet.

So it was fortunate, after all, that we had been hailed from the shore
and had stopped, dangerous as it had been. For not one of us would have
lived had we essayed that passage under the cliff. The Flathead River is
not a deep river; but the force of its flow is so great, its drop so
rapid, that the most powerful swimmer is hopeless in such a current.
Light as our flies were, again and again they were swept under and held
as though by a powerful hand.

Another year, the Flathead may be a much simpler proposition to
negotiate. Owing to the unusually heavy snows of last winter, which had
not commenced to melt on the mountain-tops until July, the river was
high. In a normal summer, I believe that this trip could be
taken--although always the boatmen must be expert in river rapids--with
comparative safety and enormous pleasure.

There is a thrill and exultation about running rapids--not for minutes,
not for an hour or two, but for days--that gets into the blood. And
when to that exultation is added the most beautiful scenery in America,
the trip becomes well worth while. However, I am not at all sure that it
is a trip for a woman to take. I can swim, but that would not have
helped at all had the boat, at any ti