PEPACTON: A SUMMER VOYAGE. 27 



way ; who built my boat ; was I a carpenter, to 

 build such a neat craft, etc. They never had seen 

 such a traveler before. Had I had no mishaps ? And 

 then they bethought them of the dangerous passes 

 that awaited me, and in good faith began to warn 

 and advise me. They had heard the tales of rafts- 

 men, and had conceived a vivid idea of the perils of 

 the river below, gauging their notions of it from the 

 spring and fall freshets tossing about the heavy and 

 cumbrous rafts. There was a whirlpool, a rock eddy, 

 and a binocle within a mile. I might be caught in 

 the biuocle, or engulfed in the whirlpool, or smashed 

 up in the eddy. But I felt much reassured when 

 they told me I had already passed several whirlpools 

 and rock eddies ; but that terrible binocle, what 

 was that? I had never heard of such a monster. 

 Oh, it was a still, miry place at the head of a big 

 eddy. The current might carry me up there, but I 

 could easily get out again ; the rafts did. But there 

 was another place I must beware of, where two ed- 

 dies faced each other; raftsmen were sometimes 

 swept off there by the oars, and drowned. And 

 when I came to rock eddy, which I would know, be- 

 ^ause the river divided there (a part of the water be- 

 ing afraid to risk the eddy, I suppose), I must go 

 ashore and survey the pass ; but in any case it would 

 \>e prudent to keep to the left. I might stick on the 

 rift, but that was nothing to being wrecked upon 

 those rocks. The boys were quite in earnest, and I 

 them I would walk up to the village and post 



