complicated water
in the big waves that followed. Emery was thrown forward in his boat,
when he reached the bottom of the chute, striking his mouth, and
bruising his hands, as he dropped his oars and caught the bulkhead. An
extra oar was wrenched from the boat and disappeared in the white
water, or foam that was as nearly white as muddy water ever gets. I
nearly upset, and broke the pin of a rowlock, the released oar being
jerked from my hand, sending me scrambling for an extra oar, when the
boat swept into a swift whirlpool. Emery caught my oar as it whirled
past him; the other was found a half-mile below in an eddy.

Some of the rapids in the centre of Marble Canyon were not more than
75 feet wide, with a corresponding violence of water. The whirlpools
in the wider channels below these rapids were the strongest we had
seen, and had a most annoying way of holding the boats just when we
thought we had evaded them. Sometimes there would be a whirlpool on
either side, with a sharply defined line of division in the centre,
along which it was next to impossible to go without being caught on
one side or the other. These whirlpools were seldom regarded as
serious, for our boats were too wide and heavy to be readily
overturned in them, although we saved ourselves more than one upset by
throwing our weight to the opposite side. A small boat would have
upset. On two occasions we were caught in small whirlpools, where a
point of rock projected from the shore, turning upstream, splitting a
swift current and making a very rapid and difficult whirl, where the
boats were nearly smashed against the walls. Below all such places
were the familiar boils, or fountains, or shoots, as they are
variously termed. These are the lower end of the whirlpools, emerging
often from the quiet water below a rapid with nearly as much violence
as they disappeared in the rapids above. These would often rise when
least expected, breaking under the boats, the swift upshoot of water
giving them such a rap that we sometimes thought we had struck a rock.
If one happened to be in the centre of a boil when it broke, it would
send them sailing down the stream many times faster than the regular
current was travelling, rowing the boat having about as little effect
on determining its course as if it was loaded on a flat-car. The other
boat, at times just a few feet away, might be caught in the whirlpools
that formed at the edge of the fountains, often opening up s