Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/373

330 through the Great Foul Rift, whirling and dragging trunks of trees and massive stones down the surcharged channels, the pitted ledges of bottom and bank are smashed like potsherds, the imprisoned stones are released and shoot down the river, and the fractured rock remains to cut the water with irregular edges as sharp as a shattered punch-bowl.

We were going into the Great Foul Rift all this time, at the rate of—but who can tell the rate of rapid water? The best canoeman I know says there is no canoeing-water in America over twelve miles an hour,—I think he places this on the Susquehanna, below Columbia,—and that eight miles is very rapid indeed. He may be right; but, were I asked how fast we went into the Great Foul Rift, I should say, at least, at the rate of twelve miles an hour, and, in parts of the descent, much faster.

Guiteras went first, but was caught on a covered flat stone in the quick, smooth water; and Moseley led into the rapid, Guiteras, who had floated off, following. I came about fifty yards behind.

From the first break of the water, the sensation was somewhat similar to that of falling through the branches of a tree. The river was twisting down-hill in convulsions. We rushed through