It took a few minutes to prepare our breakfast of coffee, toast, fresh eggs from the fine poultry run, and new milk from the cows browsing in the pretty tree-bordered meadows hard by.
Breakfasting and taking a refreshing draught of cool spring water, we regained our canoe, and as the upward course was resumed the sun burst through its cloudy barrier and shone down with cheering effect. Passing Percy Bar and the Keswick Islands we have an opportunity of testing the important question of speed, for in the narrower channels the current has a velocity of four to six miles an hour, and sometimes even faster.
Before entering a rapid or piece of swift water, we carefully oil the working parts of the motor, and see that everything is in trim for our struggle against the stream. Off we go for our first tussle, and in a minute more we are in swift water, with circling eddies and a foam-lined shore.
The water is higher than usual, owing to recent rain and well-swollen tributaries. The whole current of the great river flows through the one channel we have just entered. Fortunately, the river is deep here, and it gives a good hold for our rapidly revolving screw. The engine working well, the lever is pushed to “full-speed,” and in a moment we are cleaving the water into two high ridges at our bow, while the throbbing motor settles down to its best speed.
We look ashore a little anxiously, it must be admitted, for we appear unequal to our task, the trees alongside and the rocks by the shore holding fixed positions on our beam. It is only for a moment, however, for soon we creep along shore, slowly, very slowly; and yet we are gaining. After half-an-hour’s steady going we emerge into a wider channel, the current loses its force and now we go ahead with increasing speed.
Here we are in a run that is clear save for the quantities of logs floating downstream, and which are being gathered in and made up into rafts to be towed or guided with poles to the maws of the rapacious mill. The long boom of logs fastened together end-wise, the walking platform and the small floating shanty, together with the constant downward stream of logs of all sizes going down singly, in “twos” and “threes,” and, at times, in great bunches, all make an interesting incident in the trip; and to thread a devious way in and out of the swiftly passing timber keeps our rudder in constant oscillation as we follow the ever-changing path.
Here is Lunt’s Ferry. We see the high, steel cable strung across the river, with the running block and gang ropes connecting it with the side-railed flat barge or ferry. These floats are often propelled across stream by the force of the current. Just as a ship makes headway by the side wind running off her sails obliquely, so does a boat cross a stream by the action of the tide, if care is taken to have the boat’s head turned partly against the current. The boat being fastened to a transverse cable and running block to prevent it from being driven down stream, the tide strikes the hull obliquely and causes progression in that direction towards which the boat is headed. When the tide is sluggish a gasolene boat is frequently used to ensure more rapid progress. Moored alongside, it soon pushes the ferry across; and when traffic is active this is the best motive power.
