152 IN CAMP AND CANOE 



ing upon their paddles, hold back the canoe in the 

 middle of a heavy rapid, until a propitious moment 

 approaches for darting by the temporarily averted 

 danger. There, both men are struggling for very life, 

 straining every muscle to wrench the canoe out of a 

 current that would dash it upon a rock, or forcing it 

 against the treacherous, smooth rapid that would 

 carry it down over yonder waterfall. For a while they 

 seem to be making no headway. When one lifts his 

 paddle a little high it is evident that the canoe is los- 

 ing ground. Even for the bravest it is an exciting 

 moment. No swimmer could struggle successfully 

 against that awful tide. But one false stroke and all 

 would be over. Experience and endurance triumph in 

 the end, and never yet, when the injunctions of guides 

 have been observed, has any serious accident occurred 

 to angler or tourist in " the Canadian environment of 

 the ouananiche." 



Well indeed does Charles Hallock say * that there 

 is an exhilaration in canoe- voyaging which pertains to 

 no other kind of locomotion enjoyed by man. He 

 says: 



" In the calm of a summer's day, with sky and clouds reflected 

 in watery vacuity, whose depths seem illimitable as the sky itself, 

 one floats dreamily in space on bird-wings. He dwells among en- 

 chanted isles of air, with duplicated and inverted shores. Trees of 

 living green spring up from nothing below and grow tops down- 

 ward. ... A strange new life is this we live in our birch canoe, 

 floating gently, drifting listlessly, beguiled by pleasant fancies a 

 phantom existence, aimless and without purpose ! Oh ! this is ecstasy 

 unalloyed ! Care broods not here. But just beyond the plane of 



* The Fishing Tourist, p. 106. 



