Page:They who walk in the wilds, (IA theywhowalkinwil00robe).pdf/82



wide river, gone shallow in the midsummer heats, ran sweetly under the starlight, babbling among its long s-and-bars and chafing with a soft roar against the ragged, un-covered ledges. The steep and lofty shores, at this point some four hundred yards apart, were black with forest to their crests. From a still pool close inshore sounded sharply the splash of a leaping salmon.

Presently from behind a dark promontory about a mile downstream came a muffled, rhythmic, throbbing noise, accompanied, as it grew louder, by a heavy splashing. A few moments more and a white steamboat, her flat sides dotted with lights from the cabin windows, rounded into view. She was a stern-wheeler—in river parlance a "wheelbarrow boat"—propelled by a single huge paddle-wheel thrust out behind her stern. Flat-bottomed like a scow and of amazingly light draught, she drew so little water that the river men used to declare she would need only a heavy dew to enable her to navigate across the meadows. Driving her way doggedly upwards against the