308 TRAVEL, AD VENTURE, AND SPORT. 



and main, and the outcropping rocks are cleverly 

 avoided by the skilful bowsman and steersman, every 

 pleasurable sensation is experienced. As each boat 

 turned into the slack water below the rapid, one took 

 a long breath of relief, and the world and life itself 

 seemed to be different in the calm stillness there from 

 what it was when we were dashing through the roar- 

 ing, rushing waters in mid-stream. 



Ko length of time, nor any amount of future ad- 

 ventures, can erase from the writer's mind his arrival 

 at the Slave Falls. He was in a birch-bark canoe 

 manned by Irroquois, one of whom acted as guide. 

 The regular portage for the boats was several hun- 

 dred yards from the falls, and lay in a slack-water 

 bay, reached without any danger as long as the boats 

 kept tolerably well in towards the bank on that side. 

 Our astonishment was great at finding the guide take 

 the canoe out into mid-stream, where the current ran 

 at an exciting pace, becoming swifter every yard, until 

 at last, as one approached the vicinity of the falls, 

 it was palpably evident that we were descending a 

 steeply-inclined plane. Consoling ourselves at first 

 with the reflection that the guide knew best what he 

 was about, we sat motionless, but, let us confess it, 

 awe-stricken, as we swept into the narrow gully at 

 the end of which the great noisy roar of falling waters, 

 and the columns of spray that curled up like clouds 

 into the air, announced the position of the fall. We 

 were close to the brink. We appeared to have 



