To sing thy glories with devotion due!”
Around the big camp-fire that night, each narrated his individual experience of the day’s adventures, and the hair-breadth escapes in running the rapids.
“But,” says Bowley, the guide, “you should accompany the lumbermen ‘on the drive,’ and see the perils they run while starting a ‘jam’ on these rivers. Often the logs are piled one upon another, until it seems as if nothing but an avalanche would start them. But one log is loosened, and then another, and another, and in a moment the whole mass goes sweeping down stream with terrific force, and woe betide the unlucky ‘driver’ in its path.”
From the first of the trip to this moment, the guides had failed to praise the working of the canvas canoe, as it came in competition with their birch barks. But this day’s trial proved beyond question its qualities, and wrung from them an acknowledgment they were not slow to utter.
“It was fun to watch you, gentlemen,” says Morris, to the Quartermaster and myself, as we sat drying ourselves before the fire, “you came over the ‘rips’ like a perfect duck. I don’t believe you could drown the craft if you tried.” While the French Canadian, Weller, taking the pipe from his mouth, ejaculated, “Ma fois! she goes over the falls like a chain over a log!”
STARTING A BOOM.
On Thursday, August 21st, we wet our canoes for the first time in the East Branch of the Penobscot river, although from Chamberlin lake to this point it is strictly a part of the same stream under different names.