hands, at the oars; we cursed and toiled like a thousand others of that
grotesque fleet. There were boats of every shape, square, oblong,
circular, three-cornered, flat, round--anything that would float. They
were made mostly of boards, laboriously hand-sawn in the woods, and from
a half-inch to four inches thick. Black pitch smeared the seams of the
raw lumber. They travelled sideways as well as in any other fashion. And
in such crazy craft were thousands of amateur boatmen, sailing serenely
along, taking danger with sang-froid, and at night, over their
camp-fires, hilariously telling of their hairbreadth escapes.

We entered the Fifty-mile River; we were in a giant valley; tier after
tier of benchland rose to sentinel mountains of austerest grandeur.
There at the bottom the little river twisted like a silver wire, and
down it rowed the eager army. They shattered the silence into wildest
echo, they roused the bears out of their frozen sleep; the forest flamed
from their careless fires.

The river was our beast of burden now, a tireless, gentle beast.
Serenely and smoothly it bore us onward, yet there was a note of menace
in its song. They had told us of the canyon and of the rapids, and as we
pulled at the oars and battled with the mosquitoes, we wondered when the
danger was coming, how we would fare through it when it came.

Then one evening as we were sweeping down the placid river, the current
suddenly quickened. The banks were sliding past at a strange speed.
Swiftly we whirled around a bend, and there we were right on top of the
dreadful canyon. Straight ahead was what seemed to be a solid wall of
rock. The river looked to have no outlet; but as we drew nearer we saw
that there was a narrow chasm in the stony face, and at this the water
was rearing and charging with an angry roar.

The current was gripping us angrily now; there was no chance to draw
back. At his post stood the Jam-wagon with the keen, alert look of the
man who loves danger. A thrill of excitement ran through us all. With
set faces we prepared for the fight.

I was in the bow. All at once I saw directly in front a scow struggling
to make the shore. In her there were three people, two women and a man.
I saw the man jump out with a rope and try to snub the scow to a tree.
Three times he failed, running along the bank and shouting frantically.
I saw one of the women jump for the shore. Then at the same instant the
rope parted, and the scow, with t