Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/360

Rh paddle, only fit for deep water. As soon as the rift was past, I jointed this and used it; but when the next rift was heard, laid it aside and took up the broken paddle.

The memory of that day is wholly confused with the noise of rapid water. We were no sooner through one rift than we heard another. The names of the rapids were quaint and suggestive: such as Death's Eddy, Fiddler's Elbow, Milliner's Shoe, Sambo and Mary, Vancamp's Nose, and Shoemaker's Eddy.

One must use colors, not words, to paint the beauty of the scene that opened before us on our third day, when we ran the upper rapid at Walpack Bend, and floated into a reach of river that can hardly be surpassed in the world. On our right and left the banks were low and richly timbered; and straight ahead, barring our way, about half a mile off, a high mountain, wooded from the water to the crest.

The river runs straight to the mountain-foot, and there turns directly to the left. It is not a curve or a sweep, but distinctly a right angle; and then, for one mile with the hill to the right and the low farms on the left, and for two miles with the mountain to the left and the farms to the right, the grand stream paces slowly, like a proud horse in the eye of a multitude.