IN A FISHING COUNTRY 



oured or thwarted at every instant. The 

 Indians are erect in stocking-feet, keeping 

 easy balance in the white water a? 

 the canoes answer their bidding undi 

 coercion of the pole — now but a guid- 

 ing touch, then an arresting lunge 

 with full force of arm — always sure 

 of hold as though able to view the bottom 

 and choose at leisure. Their art, scarcely 

 to be learned without practice from boy-! 

 hood, is to paddling as paddling to the] 

 trundling of a wheelbarrow. 



'What more irrevocable than the en- 

 gagement upon a rapid! Go through you 

 must, making quick and final choice of thel 

 best or the least bad that ofifers, ever with 

 three changing points for the eye to note, 

 and the judgment to pass upon: — the im-' 

 mediate difficulty, the next barrier await- 

 ing, the set of current beyond with its 

 clue as to the likeliest side of the river be- 

 low. Five times we touch — no skill could 

 avert it — and must land to make a fire, dry 

 and gum the leaking canoes. 



'But there are miles where the pole is '., 

 laid aside, where the swift flow is un- i 

 broken, and such a rapid we enter upon. ' 

 Nicolas, seated on the thwart, urges the |l 

 canoe forward to the rhythm of an Indian ' 

 48 



