Page:Recollections of My Boyhood.djvu/46

Rh I well remember our start down the river, and how I enjoyed riding in the boat, the movement of which was like a grape vine swing. Shoving out from the Walla Walla canoe landing about the first of November, our little fleet of boats began the voyage down the great "River of the West." Whirlpools looking like deep basins in the river, the lapping, splashing, and rolling of waves, crested with foam sometimes when the wind was strong, alarmed me for a day or two on the start. But I soon recvoeredrecovered [sic] from this childish fear, and as I learned that the motion of the boat became more lively and gyratory, rocking from side to side, leaping from wave to wave, or sliding down into a trough and then mounting with perfect ease to the crest of a wave, dashing the spray into our faces when we were in rough water, the sound of rapids and the sight of foam and white caps ahead occasioned only pleasant anticipation. Often when the current was strong, the men would rest on their oars and allow the boats to be swept along by the current.

Children left to themselves and not alarmed by those they look to for protection, do not anticipate danger; as a rule they do not borrow trouble. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," is their motto, and so when not goaded with hunger, yanked up with colic, or tortured by a stone bruise or sore toe, a boy on pleasant autumn days, who had been traveling all summer bare foot through the desert sands, through sage brush, grease wood, and cactus, and had been often broken of his rest, mayhap being tortured by prickly pears between his toes, now haply being rocked as in a cradle at his mother's knee, might peradventure he overcome with drowsiness, and while dreaming of unromantic things, butter and bread for instance, pass in total ignorance of the presence of all that grand panorama-like scenery along the river, which so many clever tourists have admitted they were not able to describe. But I did see some ugly cliffs of rock, black and forbidding in appearance, along the banks of the river, some high and some not so high, some rough, barren and precipitous, while others were thickly set with timber and brush. Neither did the grown up people seem to be delighted with the scenery along the river. At least I never heard any expressions of admiration. A jaded immigrant, however, might gaze upon the