162 NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY 



again, and worked with a kind of desperate and wild energy, 

 until he sank back in the canoe completely exhausted. In the 

 mean time the boat had become half full of water, shipping a 

 part of every surf that struck her, and as we gained the shallows 

 every man sprang overboard, breast deep, and began hauling the 

 canoe to shore. This was even a more difficult task than that of 

 propelling her with the oars ; the water still broke over her, and 

 the bottom was a deep kind of quicksand, in which we sank 

 almost to the knees at every step, tlie surf at the same time 

 dashing against us with such violence as to throw us repeatedly 

 upon our faces. We at length reached the shore, and hauled 

 the canoe up out of reach of the breakers. She was then un- 

 loaded as soon as possible, and turned bottom upwards. The 

 goods had suffered considerably by the wetting; they were all 

 unbaled and dried by a large fire, which we built on the shore. 



We were soon visited by several men from the other boats, 

 which were ahead, and learned that their situation had been 

 almost precisely similar to our own, except that their Indians 

 had not evinced, to so great a degree, the same unmanly terror 

 which had rendered ours so inefficient and useless. They were, 

 however, considerably frightened, much more so than the white 

 men. It would seem strange that Indians, who have been born, 

 and have lived during their whole lives, upon the edge of the 

 water, who have been accustomed, from infancy, to the manage- 

 ment of a canoe, and in whose childish sports and manly pas- 

 times these frail barks have always been employed, should ex- 

 hibit, on occasions like this, such craven and womanly fears ; but 

 the probability is, as their business is seldom of a very urgent 

 nature, that they refrain from making excursions of any con- 

 siderable extent in situations known to be dangerous, except 

 during calm weather ; it is possible, also, that such gales may be 

 rare, and they have not been accustomed to them. Immediately 

 after we landed, our redoubtable helmsman broke away from us, 



