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 itseK 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 uijder 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 



I stones and rocks with which the bottom of the 

 hver is paved, and which in many places were 

 I 



