"She steers fine, Jim," I said. "You can get a big purchase on this oar standing up."
"See how you can get around that rock ahead," he called.
I could see its grey back bulging up from the water ahead, and the foam bubbling around it. I bent to the oar, swinging the bow around, and went by the rock in good shape.
"She certainly answers the helm all right," I reported. "We can manage unless there is a string of rocks right across the stream."
"It will be easier as we go along," said Jim. "Not the river, of course, that will get worse, but we will understand it better, all its little curly-cues and cute little ways, like slambanging you into a cliff when you think that she is going to curve the other way."
In the early afternoon we ran into a broader canyon with great walls set back from the river and thickly dotted with pines.
The walls were magnificent, over two thousand feet in height, reaching in curves ahead of us, and curving down to the stream in bold promontories.
"By Jove, but this is a fascinating business," called Jim, as we approached a great curve in the canyon. "You never knew what is ahead the next minute."
"Yes," I replied, "it is, but there is an uncertainty about it that I don't like. How do we know but there may be a waterfall just around the corner there?"
"It may be rapids, but no waterfall," replied Jim. "You needn't expect any Niagara to loom up, because the parties who have been down here before would have discovered it and that would have been all that they would have discovered."