Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/290

Rh the Connecticut to find splendid canoeing water. If one had only a week's time, and entered the river at Brattleboro', or below Turner's Falls, he would find enough beauty to remember for a life-time.

The distances on the river appear to be quite unknown to residents on the banks, who evidently judge by road measurement. We found, in most cases, that the river distance was at least a third to a half longer than the road.

One of our rarest pleasures came from paddling for a few miles up the smaller rivers that run into the Connecticut. They are invariably beautiful, and the smaller ones are indescribable as fairyland.

One stream, particularly (I think it is a short distance below White-River Junction, on the New Hampshire side), called Bromidon, was, in all respects, an ideal brook. It had the merriest voice; the brownest and most sun-flecked shallows; the darkest little nooks of deep, leafy pools; the most happy-looking, creeper-covered homesteads on its banks. We could hardly paddle into it, it was so shallow; or out of it, it was so beautiful. Guiteras wanted to write a poem about it. "The name is a poem in itself," he said; "any one could write a poem about such a stream." All the way down the river his muttered