Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/352

Rh heap of boiling breakers, still running like mad. Next moment we floated into smooth water, and turned and looked back at our first rapid with much laughing and congratulation.

The rapid, or rift (on the Upper Delaware all rapids are rifts; on the Lower Delaware all rifts are falls; the change beginning, I think, about Easton, as, for instance. Saw-mill Rift, Death's Eddy Rift, Big Foul Rift; and below, Welles's Falls, Trenton Falls, etc.)—the rapid we had passed, on looking back, seemed insignificant in descent and roughness; but we were fairly astonished at the speed of the water, and I think we had a vague consciousness that it would have been no child's play to steer through that channel had it been of any considerable length, and broken by rocks. The teamster had called it "a little one," and "a smooth rift;" what, then, were the big ones? There was no mention at all of this rift in the notes of the canoeman which I had with me. What was the ominous Great Foul Rift in comparison?

As we gazed back at the rapid, it receded from us swiftly. We were on the quiet surface of deep water, but going down at the rate of several miles an hour.

The current still kept to the left bank, and an odd bank it was,—worth describing, because