Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/355

312 to Milford, twelve miles distant, where, we had been told, there was a famous hotel. But we lingered on the way. In the sweltering heat we pulled the canoes ashore and plunged into the delicious water, drinking it as we swam—a sensation for epicures. We lay prone in the rapid stream, our arms outspread, and our faces under water, floating quickly down, and looking at the yellow and white pebbles on the bottom.

At last we came to a lovely spot, a soft white sand-bank on the left, the Jersey side, formed by the junction of a bright little river with the Delaware. Every paddle was laid down. Half a mile below we heard the dull roar of a rapid. Here the river was very deep and swift, and not more than eighty yards wide. On the right, a wooded but precipitous mountain rose almost straight from the water to a height of at least 800 feet. From his eyrie far up we had disturbed a white-headed eagle which floated and tipped its great wings above us as it moved slowly down river.

The sand-bank was in the angle where the little river fell over a short rapid of twenty yards into the Delaware. The bank was hemmed in by a dense wood.

We camped on the sand-bank for the night. One man erected the tent; another cooked dinner; the third went in search of a farmhouse for milk,