KTAADN. 
77 
sky, the mountain being now clear of clouds, in the 
northeast. Taking turns at the oars, we shot rapidly 
across Deep Cove, the foot of Pamadumcook, and the 
North Twin, at the rate of six miles an hour, the wind not 
being high enough to disturb us, and reached the Dam 
at noon. The boatmen went through one of the log 
sluices in the batteau, where the fall was ten feet at the 
bottom, and took us in below. Here was the longest 
rapid in our voyage, and perhaps the running this was 
as dangerous and arduous a task as any. Shooting 
down sometimes at the rate, as we judged, of fifteen 
miles an hour, if we struck a rock we were split from 
end to end in an instant. Now, like a bait bobbing for 
some river monster, amid the eddies, now darting to this 
side of the stream, now to that, gliding swift and smooth 
near to our destruction, or striking broad off with the 
paddle and drawing the boat to right or left with all our 
might, in order to avoid a rock. I suppose that it was 
like running the rapids of the Saute de St. Marie, at 
the outlet of Lake Superior, and our boatmen probably 
displayed no less dexterity than the Indians there do. 
We soon ran through this mile, and floated in Quakish 
Lake. 
After such a voyage, the troubled and angry waters, 
which once had seemed terrible and not to be trifled 
with, appeared tamed and subdued ; they had been 
bearded and worried in their channels, pricked and 
whipped into submission with the spike-pole and paddle, 
gone through and through with impunity, and all their 
spirit and their danger taken out of them, and the most 
swollen and impetuous rivers seemed but playthings 
henceforth. I began, at length, to understand the boat¬ 
man’s familiarity with, and contempt for, the rapids. 
