one hand
steadying the "pieces," he trots briskly away over the steep and
rock-strewn portage, his bare or mocassined feet enable him to pass
nimbly over the slippery rocks in places where boots would infallibly
send portager and pieces feet-foremost to the bottom.

In ascending the Winnipeg we have seen what exciting toil is rushing or
breasting up a rapid. Let us now glance at the still more exciting
operation of running a rapid. It is difficult-to find in life any event
which so effectually condenses intense nervous sensation into the
shortest possible space of time as does the work of shooting, or running
an immense rapid. There is no toil, no heart-breaking labour about it,
but as much coolness, dexterity, and skill as man can throw into the work
of hand, eye, and head; knowledge of when to strike and how to do it;
knowledge of water and of rock, and of the one hundred combinations which
rock and watercan assume--for these two things, rock and water, taken in
the abstract, fail as completely to convey any idea of their fierce
embracings in the throes of a rapid as the fire burning quietly in a
drawing-room fireplace fails to convey the idea of a house wrapped and
sheeted in flames. Above the rapid all is still and quiet, and one cannot
see what is going on below the first rim of the rush, but stray shoots of
spray and the deafening roar of descending water tell well enough what is
about to happen. The Indian has got some rock or mark to steer by, and
knows well the door by which he is to enter the slope of water. As the
canoe--never appearing so frail and tiny as when it is about to commence
its series of wild leaps and rushes--nears the rim where the waters
disappear from view, the bowsman stands up and, stretching forward his
head, peers down the eddying rush'; in a second he is on his knees again;
without turning his head he speaks a word or two to those who are behind
him; then not quick enough to take in the rushing scene. There is a rock
here and a big green cave of water there; there is a tumultuous rising
and sinking and sinking of snow-tipped waves; there are places that are
smooth-running for a moment and then yawn and open up into great gurgling
chasms the next; there are strange whirls and backward eddies and rocks,
rough and smooth and polished--and through all this the canoe glances
like an arrow, dips like a wild bird down the wing of the storm, now
slanting from a rock, now edging a green cavern, now