Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/359

316 Milford. He had a camera with him, and his desire to get out and take a view grew on him like a disease. No impatience, or protest, or prayer affected him. "When we get home," he would unselfishly say, "these pictures will be the best part of the trip,"—and he was right.

The banks on both sides now rose into mountains, wooded to the top. The river was a series of deep and swift reaches, and then a leaping rift, with a steep descent.

In the very centre of one of these rapids, an unusually deep one, my canoe struck on a covered rock and I knew in a flash that she must either get instantly over or be rolled down stream. Thought and act united. I lifted her by a vigorous push, and was whirled down, stern foremost, with my paddle broken.

Fortunately, the channel below was deep, though rough and very rapid. To meet the emergency I knelt up, instead of sitting as heretofore, and used the broken end of the paddle as a pole, fending off rocks, and steering occasionally with the blade end.

Before I had cleared the rapid I knew that my loss was a gain. The best way to steer a canoe down a rapid is to kneel and use a long paddle with one blade, the other end to be used as a pole.

I had a spare paddle in the canoe, a delicate spoon