KTAADN. 
75 
ious to avoid the delay, as well as the labor, of the port¬ 
age here, our boatmen went forward first to reconnoitre, 
and concluded to let the batteau down the fails, carrying 
the baggage only over the portage. Jumping from rock 
to rock until nearly in the middle of the stream, we 
were ready to receive the boat and let her down over 
the first fall, some six or seven feet perpendicular. The 
boatmen stand upon the edge of a shelf of rock, where 
the fall is perhaps nine or ten feet perpendicular, in 
from one to two feet of rapid water, one on each side of 
the boat, and let it slide gently over, till the bow is run 
out ten or twelve feet in the air; then, letting it drop 
squarely, while one holds the painter, the. other leaps 
in, and his companion following, they are whirled down 
the rapids to a new fall, or to smooth water. In a very 
few minutes they had accomplished a passage in safety, 
which would be as foolhardy for the unskilful to at¬ 
tempt as the descent of Niagara itself. It seemed as if 
it needed only a little familiarity, and a little more skill, 
to navigate down such falls as Niagara itself with safety. 
At any rate, I should not despair of such men in the 
rapids above table-rock, until I saw them actually go 
over the falls, so cool, so collected, so fertile in resources 
are they. One might have thought that these were 
falls, and that falls were not to be waded through with 
impunity, like a mud-puddle. There was really danger 
of their losing their sublimity in losing their power to 
harm us. Familiarity breeds contempt. The boatman 
pauses, perchance, on some shelf beneath a table-rock 
under the fall, standing in some cove of back-water two 
feet deep, and you hear his rough voice come up through 
the spray, coolly giving directions how to launch the boat 
this time. 
