Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/367

324 of rapid broken water. To the person who drives or walks along a river, the rapid seems the safest spot, because it is obviously the shallowest. But, as the teamster said at Port Jervis, it is "the bottom that is to be feared, not the top."

"It is just the same with humanity," says Guiteras, when this thought is spoken; "it is the superficial and hasty people who make all the trouble. Depth of mind is as safe as depth of water."

The last word to us from the boat-keeper at the Water Gap was, of course, a warning about the Great Foul Rift. We ran two or three rapids that day that tested nerves and boats, and were exasperated to hear that they were "smooth rifts," and "nothing at all to the Big Foul."

In the high heat of the afternoon, we came to a place where a little waterfall leaped down a bank almost twenty feet into the river. The falling water was white as snow. We went under it and enjoyed a glorious shower bath, but found that in the centre the water fell in lumps almost as heavy and hurtful as clay.

That day too, we had another novel and delightful experience. We came to an unbroken reach of river on which the descent was so great that a stretch of two miles before us resembled a