“Yes, you might catch some salmon in the season; but there is nothing else you could eat. It is very beautiful too, and those pine-trees that stand there are as they stand worth nothing, but if you had them cut into square timbers, and lying in one of the London docks, they would be worth from ten to forty pounds each.”
“But it is glorious to see all this,” I said eagerly.
“Yes; glorious. In all my travels I have seen nothing more beautiful,” said Gunson; and he added laughing, “I never went up a river that was so rugged and so swift.”
It was just in such a nook as that which we had admired so much that the Indians ran the boat ashore about midday, and after making her fast in a glassy little pool, they signed to us to get out, after which they all sat down among the ferns, and under the shelter of the spreading boughs of a pine, and brought out some food. We imitated their example, and made a hearty meal, washing it down with a tin of water from a little fountain which gushed from a moss-covered rock.
By this time the Indians were lying down apparently asleep, and it set me thinking about what our position would be if we followed their example and they decamped with our boxes and stores. Suppose there was no way out of this neck, for the sides looked as if it would be impossible to climb them, and it was evidently a rare thing for any boat to go up or down.
However, these were only fancies, for after about an hour’s rest the Indians suddenly jumped up and pointed to the boat. We got in, and the struggle with the river began again, to be kept up till the sun had descended behind the mountains, and it was beginning to look gloomy where the river ran. Places that would have been glorious to the eye in the bright sunshine now seemed weird and terrible, impressing even our hard, stern friend, so that he suddenly said—
“We had better land at the first suitable place, and make camp for the night. We can easily get a good fire.”
I was glad to hear him say this, for with the advancing evening the waters looked cold, and the echoing roar of torrent and fall had an awful sound that began to affect my spirits, and Esau’s as well, for he suddenly said to me—
“I say, this part ain’t half so beautiful as some of the others.”
Gunson set himself the task of explaining to the Indians that we wanted to land, a want that they grasped directly; the leader nodding and pointing forward beyond a sudden bend of the river, where it made a sweep to our right round a towering buttress of rock, which projected so far that it seemed to block up the channel, and turn the place into a lake. Then bending once more to their paddles, they set up their monotonous chant, and in about an hour we were round the great rocky buttress, and making for a meadow-like patch surrounded by magnificent trees, and upon which dotted here and there were rough shanties.