RUNNING THE RAPIDS. 79 



Everitt's delighted yell alone, in ordinary weather, 

 with a little wind in its favor, might have been 

 heard easily sixteen miles. His whole being, cor- 

 poral and spiritual, seemed to resolve itself into 

 one prolonged howl of unmitigated happiness. 



Having rested ourselves, we started again. By 

 this time, brief as the experience had been, I had 

 learned much as to the action of currents, and was 

 able to judge pretty correctly how low a rock or 

 ledge lay under water by the size and motion of 

 the swirl above it. One learns fast in action ; 

 and fifteen minutes of actual experience amid 

 rapids does more to teach the eye and hand what 

 to do, and how to do it, than any amount of infor- 

 mation gathered from other sources. To sit in 

 your light shell of a boat, in mid-current, with 

 rocks on either side, where the bed of the river 

 declines at an angle of thirty degrees, knowing 

 that a miscalculation of the eye, a misstroke of the 

 oar or the least shaking of the muscles will send 

 your boat rolling over and over, and you under it, 

 has a very strong tendency to make a man look 

 sharp and keep his wits about him. 



Well, as I said, we started. For some fifty rods 

 the current was comparatively smooth and slow. 

 The river was wide and the decline not sharp. 

 The chief difficulty we found to be in avoiding the 

 stones and rocks with which the bottom of the 

 river is paved, and which in many places were 



