ASAM AND THE NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES. 341 



I did not experience any very inconvenient losses. All those who could 

 not aid effectually in managing the boats were made to keep the shore, but 

 even then their help was called for when engaged in a rapid, as the exer- 

 tions of the boatmen were hardly sufficient to overcome the resistance of 

 the stream. On these occasions, the smallest canoes, manned by two 

 expert fishermen, are pushed through with very little delay, the larger 

 boats drawn up into still water, and forces are joined for extricating one 

 at a time. At a rapid, the form of the bottom is always a very gentle slope 

 on one side, deepening gradually towards the other, where it would be 

 impossible to stop the force of the current. The canoe is run aground on 

 the shallow side, and is dragged up sometimes supported by the water, 

 and sometimes its weight wholly resting on the boulders or rounded stones. 



I recollect but one exception where, for the space of four hundred or 

 five hundred yards, the depth appears equal in the whole width, and here 

 the major part of the river, collected in one stream, descends the declivity 

 at the rate of at least ten miles an hour. 



It is in coming down the rapids that skill, on the part of the conductor, 

 is requisite : his object is generally to bring his boat to that point suffici- 

 ently remote from the shallower side, to secure a sufficient depth of water 

 to avoid touching ; but he is almost equally afraid of the violence of the 

 current and of its asitated state on the other. 



O" 



It is a moment of intense interest, when silence prevailing in the 

 boat, no exertion is made, but by the steersman and his principal coad- 

 jutor at the head. They too sit almost motionless, yet forming their 

 judgment while they have a perfect command over her, in the calm smooth 

 stream above, they carefully guide her to the shooting place. The water 

 is clear as crystal, and the large round blocks at the bottom, above which 

 she glides with the velocity of lightning, seemed removed but an inch or 



2 Q 



