SHOOTING COHECTON FALLS 



Cedars and Shohola Rapids, a delighted 

 audience behind a team of fast horses 

 cheered us to the echo. Here the nar- 

 rator pushed on to overtake his family, 

 who had gone by railroad to Sparrow- 

 bush, an up-river suburb of Port Jervis. 



Shohola passed, a rapid was en- 

 countered that half way down seemed 

 to have no channel whatever. On every 

 side rocks presented in a broadened 

 river. Waves as well as stones in rapids 

 are stationary, but the canoeist, flying 

 onward, feels himself at rest, and they 

 apparently driving with wind-like speed 

 straight at him. These rocks whizzing 

 up river like spent cannon balls from 

 all sides, with the writer as a target, 

 kept him so busy dodging with the 

 canoe that it is beyond his power to 

 tell just what transpired. 



The culmination of the fun is Mon- 

 gaup Rapids. Here the river in a fun- 

 nel-like contraction one-fifth its average 

 width shoots its whole volume in a 

 jump with a force sufficient to float a 

 crow-bar. The dash is made against a 



rock so deeply submerged as to be a 

 negligible quantity, except in its external 

 manifestations in the hugest comber on 

 the river. The great thing hangs, a 

 towering, roaring menace, seemingly 

 to the navigator, suspended midway 

 between the water and the clouds, de- 

 mon river sentinel that all must en- 

 counter that pass that way, since there 

 is no channel save through its wat- 

 ery core. It is an ordeal that only 

 a well-built, lightly loaded and rightly 

 managed craft can pass. 



Two miles more of rapids, tempestu- 

 ous but full, deep and devoid stones that 

 the alert cannot dodge, and Sparrow- 

 bush is reached, where really danger- 

 ous water ceases for over fifty miles. 

 Here the river ends its tantrums by 

 plunging against a tremendous cliff on 

 the western shore, bold, towering rocks 

 traversed by cascades and decorated 

 with flowers and trees, making setting 

 for the river at which the guests of 

 Eddy Farm, low-lying on the bank just 

 opposite, never tire of looking. 



393 



