Down the Columbia Part 5

It _was_ too late all right; even Roos was ready to grant that. Jock was about six-feet-three, and built in proportion. Also a wee bitty dour, I thought. At least he glowered redly under his bushy brows when he discovered that I had wrapped up his own and another _nicht-goon_ in my hastily a.s.sembled blanket-roll. If that bothered him, I hate to think what might have happened had he surprised that farewell scene, especially as Roos--with his Mack Sennett training and D. W. Griffith ideals--would have tried to stage it.

Roos was young and inexperienced, and lacking in both finesse and subtlety. I granted that this wouldn't have cramped his style much in doing "old home town stuff;" but farther afield it was electric with dangerous possibilities. Driving back to the hotel I quoted to him what Kipling's hero in "The Man Who Would Be King" said on the subject, paraphrasing it slightly so he would understand. "A man has no business shooting farewell scenes with borrowed brides in foreign parts be he three times a crowned movie director," was the way I put it.

It was my original intention to start the boating part of my Columbia trip from Golden, at the head of the Big Bend, the point at which the calm open reaches of the upper river give way to really swift water. The decision to make the push-off from Beavermouth, twenty-nine miles farther down, was come to merely because it was much easier to get the boat into the water at the latter point. There was little swift-water boating worthy of the name above Beavermouth. Donald Canyon was about the only rough water, and even that, I was a.s.sured, was not to be mentioned in the same breath with scores of rapids farther down the Bend. In the ninety miles between the foot of Lake Windermere and Golden there were but twenty-five feet of fall, so that the winding river was hardly more than a series of lagoon-like reaches, with a current of from one to four miles an hour. Between Columbia Lake--practically the head of the main channel of the river--and Mud Lake, and between the latter and the head of Lake Windermere, there was a stream of fairly swift current, but at this time of year not carrying enough water to permit the pa.s.sage of even a canoe without much lining and portaging.

From the practical aspect, therefore, I was quite content with the plan to start my voyage from Beavermouth. For the sake of sentiment, however, I _did_ want to make some kind of a push-off from the very highest point that offered sufficient water to float a boat at the end of September.

This, I was a.s.sured in Invermere, would be Ca.n.a.l Flats, just above the head of Columbia Lake and immediately below the abandoned locks which at one time made navigation possible between the Kootenay and the Columbia.

Although these crude log-built locks have never been restored since they were damaged by a great freshet in the nineties, and although the traffic they pa.s.sed in the few years of their operation was almost negligible, it may be of interest to give a brief description of the remarkable terrain that made their construction possible by the simplest of engineering work, and to tell how the removal of a few shovelfuls of earth effected the practical insulation of the whole great range of the Selkirks.

As a consequence of recent geological study, it has been definitely established that the divide between the Columbia and Kootenay rivers, now at Ca.n.a.l Flats, was originally a hundred and fifty miles farther north, or approximately where Donald Canyon occurs. That is to say, a great wall of rock at the latter point backed up a long, narrow lake between the Rockies on the east and the Selkirks on the west. This lake, unable to find outlet to the north, had risen until its waters were sufficiently above the lower southern barriers to give it drainage in that direction. At that time it was doubtless the main source of the Kootenay River, and its waters did not reach the Columbia until after a long and devious southerly course into what is now Montana, thence northward into Kootenay Lake, and finally, by a dizzy westerly plunge, into a much-extended Arrow Lake. An upheaval which carried away the d.y.k.e at Donald provided a northward drainage for the lake, and the divide was ultimately established at what is now called Ca.n.a.l Flats. It was a s.h.i.+fting and precarious division, however, for the Kootenay--which rises some distance to the northward in the Rockies and is here a sizable stream--discharged a considerable overflow to the Columbia basin at high water. It was this latter fact which called attention to the comparative ease with which navigation could be established between the two rivers by means of a ca.n.a.l. For an account of how this ca.n.a.l came to be built I am indebted to E. M. Sandilands, Esq., Mining Recorder for the British Columbia Government at Wilmer, who has the distinction of being, to use his own language, "the person who made the Selkirk Mts. an Island by connecting the Columbia and Kootenay rivers."

Mr. Sandilands, in a recent letter, tells how an ex-big-game hunter by the name of Baillie-Grohman obtained, in 1886, a concession from the Provincial Government of British Columbia for 35,000 acres of land along the Kootenay River. In return for this he was to construct at his own expense a ca.n.a.l connecting the Columbia and Kootenay. This cut was for the ostensible purpose of opening up navigation between the two streams, but as nothing was stipulated in respect of dredging approaches the obligation of the concessionaire was limited to the construction of the ca.n.a.l and locks. "For this reason," writes Mr. Sandilands, who was working on the job at the time, "our 'Grand Ca.n.a.l' was practically useless. Nevertheless, in 1888, it was opened with due form and pomp, engineer, contractor and concessionaire paddling up to the lock in a canoe well laden with the 'good cheer' demanded by such an occasion. I was driving a team attached to a 'slush-sc.r.a.per,' and together with a jovial Irish spirit who rejoiced in the name of Thomas Haggerty, was ordered by the foreman to sc.r.a.pe out the false dam holding the Kootenay back from the ca.n.a.l. This we did as long as we dared. Then I was deputed, with gum-boots and shovel, to dig a hole through what was left of the false dam, and allow the Kootenay into the ca.n.a.l and the Columbia. This being done, the fact was wired to the Provincial Government at Victoria ..., and the promised concession of land was asked for and granted. I little thought at the time," Mr. Sandilands concludes, "how distinguished a part I was playing, that I was making the Selkirk Mountains an 'Island,' a fact which few people realize to this day."

Later a little dredging was done, so that finally, by dint of much "capstaning," a shallow-draught stern-wheeler was worked up to and through the lock and ca.n.a.l, and on down the Kootenay to Jennings, Montana. It was Captain F. P. Armstrong who performed this remarkable feat, only to lose the historic little craft later in one of the treacherous canyons of the Kootenay. His also was the distinction, after maintaining an intermittent service between the Columbia and Kootenay for a number of years, of being the captain and owner of the last boat to make that amazing pa.s.sage.

We reached Ca.n.a.l Flats at the end of a forty-mile auto-ride from Invermere. Traces of the old dredged channel were still visible running up from the head of Columbia Lake and coming to an abrupt end against a caving wall of logs which must at one time have been a gate of the inter-river lock. Out of the tangle of maiden hair fern which draped the rotting logs came a clear trickle of water, seeping through from the other side of the divide. This was what was popularly called the source of the Columbia. I could just manage to scoop the river dry with a quick sweep of my cupped palm.

A hundred yards below the source the old channel opened out into a quiet currentless pool, and here I found a half-filled Peterboro belonging to a neighbouring farmer, which I had engaged for the first leg of my voyage down the Columbia. It leaked rather faster than I could bail, but even at that it floated as long as there was water to float it. Fifty yards farther down a broad mudbank blocked the channel all the way across, and in attempting to drag the old canoe out for the portage, I pulled it in two amids.h.i.+ps. I had made my start from almost chock-a-block against the source, however. Sentiment was satisfied. I was now ready for the Bend. Groping my way back to the car through an almost impenetrable pall of mosquitoes, I rejoined Roos and we returned to Invermere.

A wire from Blackmore stating that it would still be several days before his boat was ready for the Bend offered us a chance to make the journey to Golden by river if we so desired. There was nothing in it on the boating side, but Roos thought there might be a chance for some effective scenic shots. I, also, was rather inclined to favour the trip, for the chance it would give of hardening up my hands and pulling muscles before tackling the Bend. An unpropitious coincidence in the matter of an Indian name defeated the plan. Roos and I were trying out on Lake Windermere a sweet little skiff which Randolph Bruce had kindly volunteered to let us have for the quiet run down to Golden. "By hard pulling," I said, "we ought just about to make Spillimacheen at the end of the first day." "Spill a what?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Roos anxiously; "you didn't say 'machine,' did you?" "Yes; Spillimacheen," I replied. "It's the name of a river that flows down to the Columbia from the Selkirks."

"Then that settles it for me," he said decisively. "I don't want to spill my machine. It cost fifteen hundred dollars. I'm not superst.i.tious; but, just the same, starting out for a place with a name like that is too much like asking for trouble to suit yours truly." And so we went down to Golden by train and put in the extra time outfitting for the Bend.

Golden, superbly situated where the Kicking Horse comes tumbling down to join the Columbia, is a typical Western mining and lumbering town. Save for their penchant for dramatizing the perils of the Big Bend, the people are delightful. It is true that the hospitable spirit of one Goldenite _did_ get me in rather bad; but perhaps the fault was more mine than his. Meeting him on the railway platform just as he was about to leave for Vancouver, he spoke with great enthusiasm of his garden, and said that he feared some of his fine strawberries might be going to waste in his absence for lack of some one to eat them. I gulped with eagerness at that, and then told him bluntly--and truthfully--that I would willingly steal to get strawberries and cream, provided, of course, that they couldn't be acquired in some more conventional way. He hastened to rea.s.sure me, saying that it wouldn't be necessary to go outside the law in this case. "The first chance you get," he said with a twinkle in his eye, "just slip over and make love to my housekeeper, and tell her I said to give you your fill of berries and cream, and I have no doubt she'll provide for you."

If his Vancouver-bound train had not started to pull out just then, perhaps he would have explained that that accursed "love stuff" formula was a figure of speech. Or perhaps he felt sure that I would understand it that way, if not at once, at least when the time came. And I would have, ordinarily. But my strawberry-and-cream appet.i.te is so overpowering that, like the lions at feeding time, my finer psychological instincts are blunted where satiation is in sight. That was why I blurted out my hospitable friend's directions almost verbatim when I saw that the door of his home (to which I had rushed at my first opportunity) had been opened by a female. It was only after I had spoken that I saw that she was lean, angular, gimlet-eyed, and had hatred of all malekind indelibly stamped upon her dour visage. She drew in her breath whistlingly; then controlled herself with an effort. "I suppose I must give you the berries and cream," she said slowly and deliberately, the clearly enunciated words falling icily like the drip from the glacial grottoes at the head of the Columbia; "but the--the other matter you would find a little difficult."

"Ye-es, ma'am," I quavered s.h.i.+veringly, "I would. If you'll please send the strawberries and cream to the hotel I am quite content to have it a cash transaction."

Considering the way that rapier-thrust punctured me through and through, I felt that I deserved no little credit for sticking to my guns in the matter of the strawberries and cream. For the rest, I was floored. The next time any one tries to send me into the Hesperides after free fruit I am going to know who is guarding the apples; and I am _not_ going to approach the delectable garden by the love-path.

I had taken especial pains to warn Roos what he would have to expect from Golden in the matter of warnings about the Big Bend, but in spite of all, that garrulous social centre, the town pool-room, did manage to slip one rather good one over on him before we got away. "How long does it take to go round the Bend?" he had asked of a circle of trappers and lumber-jacks who were busily engaged in their favourite winter indoor-sport of decorating the pool-room stove with a frieze of tobacco juice. "Figger it fer yerself, sonny," replied a corpulent woodsman with a bandaged jaw. "If yer gets inter yer boat an' lets it go in that ten-twent'-thirt' mile current, it's a simpl' problum of 'rithmatick. If yer ain't dished in a souse-hole, yer _has_ ter make Revelstoke insider one day. As yer has ter do sum linin' to keep right side up, it's sum slower. Best time any of us makes it in is two days. But we never rushes it even like that 'nless we're hurryin' the cor'ner down ter sit on sum drownded body."

As the whole court had nodded solemn acquiescence to this, and as none had cracked anything remotely resembling a smile, Roos was considerably impressed--not to say depressed. (So had I been the first time I heard that coroner yarn.) Nor did he find great comfort in the hotel proprietor's really well-meant attempt at rea.s.surance. "Don't let that story bother you, my boy," the genial McConnell had said; "they _never_ did take the coroner round the Big Bend. Fact is, there _never_ was a coroner here that had the guts to tackle it!"

We met Blackmore at Beavermouth the afternoon of the twenty-eighth of September. He reported that his boat had been s.h.i.+pped from Revelstoke by that morning's way freight, and should arrive the following day. As I had been unable to engage a boatman in Golden, and as Blackmore had found only one in Revelstoke to suit him, it was decided to give me an oar and a pike-pole and make out the best we could without another man.

I had brought provisions for a fortnight with me from Golden, and Blackmore had tents and canvases. Through the efforts of influential friends in Golden I had also been able to secure two bottles of prime Demerara rum. Knowing that I was going to pick up at least one cask of Scotch on the way, and perhaps two or three, I had not been very keen about bothering with the rum. But on the a.s.surance that it might well be two or three days before any whisky was found, and that getting wet in the Columbia without something to restore the circulation was as good as suicide, I allowed myself to be persuaded. It was wonderful stuff--thirty per cent. over-proof; which means that it could be diluted with four parts of water and still retain enough potency to make an ordinary man blink if he tried to bolt it. We did find one man--but he was not ordinary by any means; far from it. I will tell about "Wild Bill" in the proper place.

There was a wonderful _aurora borealis_ that night--quite the finest display of the kind I recall ever having seen in either the northern or southern hemispheres. Blackmore--weather-wise from long experience--regarded the marvellous display of lambently licking light streamers with mixed feelings. "Yes, it's a fine show," he said, following the opalescent glimmer of the fluttering pennants with a dubious eye; "but I'm afraid we'll have to pay through the nose for it.

It means that in a couple of days more the rain will be streaming down as fast as those lights are streaming up. Just about the time we get well into Surprise Rapids there will be about as much water in the air as in the river. However, it won't matter much," he concluded philosophically, "for we'll be soaked anyway, whether we're running or lining, and rain water's ten degrees warmer than river water."

CHAPTER VI

I. RUNNING THE BEND

_Through Surprise Rapids_

We pushed off from Beavermouth at three o'clock of the afternoon of September twenty-ninth. We had hoped for an early start, but the erratically running local freight, six or eight hours behind time, did not arrive with our boat until noon. The introductory shots had already been made. Made up momentarily as a gentleman--wearing an ankle length polished waterproof and a clean cap, that is,--I jumped the westbound Limited as it slowed down on entering the yard, dropping off presently at the platform with a "here-I-am" expression when Roos signalled that the focus was right. Then I shook hands with the waiting Blackmore, and together we strode to the door of the station and met the previously-rehea.r.s.ed agent. (Roos had wanted me to shake hands with the agent as well as with Blackmore, but I overruled him by pointing out that I was a "gentleman-sportsman" not a "gentleman-politician," and served notice on him that pump-handling must henceforth be reduced to a minimum.) We tried to perfect the agent in a sweeping gesture that would say as plainly as words "The train with your boat is just around that next bend, sir," but somehow we couldn't prevent his trying to elevate his lowly part. His lips mumbled the words we had put on them all right, but the gesture was a grandiose thing such as a Chesterfieldian footman might have employed in announcing "My Lord, the carriage waits."

Roos, in all innocence, narrowly missed provoking a fight with a hot-tempered half-breed while he was setting up to shoot the incoming freight. He had an ingenious method of determining, without bending over his finder, just what his lens was going to "pick-up." This consisted of holding his arms at full length, with his thumbs placed tip to tip and the forefingers standing straight up. The right-angling digits then framed for his eye an approximation of his picture. To one not used to it this esoteric performance looked distinctly queer, especially if he chanced to be standing somewhere near the arch priest's line of vision.

And that, as it happened, was exactly the place from which it was revealed to the choleric near-Shuswap section hand. I didn't need the breed's subsequent contrite explanation to know that, from where he had been standing, those twiddling thumbs and fingers, through the great fore-shortening of the arms, looked to be right on the end of the nose of the grimacing little man by the camera. Not even a self-respecting white man would have stood for what that twiddling connoted, let alone a man in whose veins flowed blood that must have been something like fifteen-sixteenths of the proudest of Canadian strains. Luckily, both Blackmore and his burly boatman were men of action. Even so, it was a near squeeze for both camera and cameraman. Roos emerged unscarred in anything but temperament. And, of course, as every one even on the fringes of the movies knows, the temperaments of both stars and directors are things that require frequent harrowing to keep them in good working order.

Roos' filming of the unloading of the boat was the best thing he did on the trip. Every available man in Beavermouth was requisitioned. This must have been something like twenty-five or thirty. A half dozen, with skids and rollers, could have taken the boat off without exerting themselves seriously, but could hardly have "made it snappy." And action was what the scene demanded. There was no time for a rehearsal. The agent simply told us where the car would be shunted to, Blackmore figured out the best line from there over the embankment and through the woods to the river, and Roos undertook to keep up with the procession with his camera. Blackmore was to superintend the technical operation and I was ordered to see that the men "acted natural." And thus we went to it. The big boat, which must have weighed close to half a ton, came off its flat car like a paper shallop, but the resounding thwack with which her bows. .h.i.t a switch-frog awakened Blackmore's concern. "Easy!

Easy! Don't bust her bottom," he began shouting; while I, on the other side, took up my refrain of "Don't look at the camera!--make it snappy."

The consequence of these diametrically opposed orders was that the dozen or more men on my side did most of the work. But even so it was "snappy"--very.

Down the embankment we rushed like a speeding centipede, straight at the fine hog-proof wire fence of the C. P. R. right-of-way. That fence may have been hog-proof, but it was certainly not proof against the charge of a thirty-foot boat coming down a fifty per cent. grade pushed by twenty-five men. We had intended lifting over it, but our momentum was too great, especially after I had failed to desist from shouting "Make it snappy!" soon enough. The barrier gave way in two or three places, so that we were shedding trailing lengths of wire all the way to the river.

On through the woods we juggernauted, Roos following in full cry. His city "news stuff" training was standing him in good stead, and he showed no less cleverness than agility in making successive "set-ups" without staying our progress. Only in the last fifty yards, where the going over the moss and pine needles was (comparatively speaking) lightning fast, did we distance him. Here, as there was plenty of time, he cut a hole in the trees and shot the launching through one of his favourite "sylvan frames." For the push-off shot he provided his customary heart throb by bringing down the station agent's three-year-old infant to wave farewell. That he didn't try to feature the mother prominently seemed to indicate that what I had said at Windermere on the subject had had some effect.

After the "farewell" had been filmed, we landed at the fire ranger's cabin to pick up Roos and his camera. The ranger told us that a couple of trappers who had been for some weeks engaged in portaging their winter supplies round Surprise Rapids would be waiting for us at the head of the first fall in the expectation of getting the job of packing our stuff down to the foot. "Nothing doing," Blackmore replied decisively; "going straight through." The ranger grinned and shook his grizzled head. "You're the man to do it," he said; "but jest the same, I'm glad it's you and not me that has the job."

The station agent came down with Roos, evidently with the cheering purpose of showing us the place where his predecessor and a couple of other men had been drowned in attempting to cross the river some months previously. "Only man in the boat to be picked up alive was a one-armed chap," he concluded impressively. "Too late now for operations on any of this crew," laughed Blackmore, pus.h.i.+ng off with a pike-pole. "Besides, every man jack of us is going to have a two-arm job all the way." To the parting cheers of the mackinawed mob on the bank, he eased out into the current and headed her down the Bend.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ARRIVAL OF OUR BOAT AT BEAVERMOUTH (_above_)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: OUR FIRST CAMP AT BEAVERMOUTH (_centre_)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE REMAINS OF A SUNKEN FOREST (_below_)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: TRAPPER'S CABIN WHERE WE FOUND SHELTER FOR THE NIGHT (_above_)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHERE WE LANDED ABOVE SURPRISE RAPIDS (_centre_)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHERE WE TIED UP AT "EIGHT MILE" (_below_)]

Roos stationed himself in the bow, with camera set up on its shortened tripod, waiting to surprise any scenery caught lurking along the way.

Blackmore steered from the stern with his seven-feet-long birch paddle.

Andy Kitson and I, pulling starboard and port oars respectively, rubbed shoulders on the broad 'mids.h.i.+p's thwart. Our outfit--a comparatively light load for so large a boat--was stowed pretty well aft. I saw Blackmore lean out to "con s.h.i.+p" as we got under way. "Good trim," he p.r.o.nounced finally, with an approving nod. "Just load enough to steady her, and yet leave plenty of freeboard for the sloppy water. This ought to be a dryer run than some the old girl's had." I chuckled to myself over that "dryer." I hadn't told Blackmore yet what was hidden down Canoe River way. I had promised Captain Armstrong not to do so until I had ascertained that we had a teetotal crew--or one comparatively so.

Andy Kitson was a big husky North-of-Irelander, who had spent twenty years trapping, packing, hunting, lumbering and boating in western Canada. Like the best of his kind, he was deliberate and sparing of speech most of the time, but with a fine reserve vocabulary for emergency use. He was careful and cautious, as all good river boatmen should be, but decidedly "all there" in a pinch. He pulled a good round-armed thumping stroke with his big oar, and took to the water (as has to be done so frequently on a bad stretch of "lining down") like a beaver. Best of all, he had a temper which nothing from a leak in the tent dribbling down his neck to a half hour up to his waist in ice-cold water seemed equal to ruffling. I liked Andy the moment I set eyes on his s.h.i.+ning red gill, and I liked him better and better every day I worked and camped with him.

As it was three-thirty when we finally pushed off, Blackmore announced that he would not try to make farther than "Eight-Mile" that afternoon.

With comparatively good water all the way to the head of Surprise Rapids, we could have run right on through, he said; but that would force us to make camp after dark, and he disliked doing that unless he had to. In a current varying from three to eight miles an hour, we slid along down stream between banks golden-gay with the turning leaves of poplar, cottonwood and birch, the bright colours of which were strikingly accentuated by the sombre background of thick-growing spruce, hemlock, balsam and fir. Yellow, in a score of shades, was the prevailing colour, but here and there was a splash of glowing crimson from a patch of _chin-chinick_ or Indian tobacco, or a ma.s.s of dull maroon where a wild rose clambered over the thicket. Closely confined between the Rockies to the right and the Selkirks to the west, the river held undeviatingly to its general northwesterly course, with only the patchiest of flats on either side. And this was the openest part of the Bend, Blackmore volunteered; from the head of Surprise Rapids to the foot of Priest Rapids the Columbia was so steeply walled that we would not find room for a clearing large enough to support a single cow. "It's a dismal hole, and no mistake," he said.

We took about an hour to run to "Eight Mile," Andy and I pulling steadily all the way in the deep, smoothly-running current. We tied up in a quiet lagoon opening out to the west--evidently the mouth of a high-water channel. There was a magnificent stand of fir and spruce on a low bench running back from the river, not of great size on account of growing so thickly, but amazing lofty and straight. We camped in the shelter of the timber without pitching a tent, Andy and Blackmore sleeping in the open and Roos and I in a tumble-down trapper's cabin. Or rather we spread our blankets in the infernal hole. As the place was both damp and rat-infested, we did not sleep. Roos spent the night chopping wood and feeding the rust-eaten--and therefore smoky--sheet-iron stove. I divided my time between growling at Roos for enticing me into keeping him company in the cabin against Blackmore's advice, and throwing things at the prowling rodents. It did not make for increased cheerfulness when I hit him on the ear with a hob-nailed boot that I had intended for a pair of eyes gleaming vitreously on a line about six inches back of his gloomily bowed head. He argued--and with some reason I must admit--that I had no call to draw so fine a bead until I was surer of my aim. Largely as a point of repartee, I told him not to be too certain I was not sure of my aim. But I really had been trying to hit the rat....

I took the temperature of the air and the river water in the morning, finding the former to register thirty-eight degrees and the latter forty-one. There was a heavy mist resting on the river for a couple of hours after daybreak, but it was lifting by the time we were ready to push off. In running swift water good visibility is even more imperative than at sea, but as there was nothing immediately ahead to bother Blackmore did not wait for it to clear completely. The sun was s.h.i.+ning brightly by nine-thirty, and Roos made several shots from the boat and one or two from the bank. One of the most remarkable sights unfolded to us was that of "Snag Town." Just what was responsible for this queer maze of upended trees it would be hard to say. It seems probable, however, that a series of heavy spring floods undermined a considerable flat at the bend of the river, carrying away the earth and leaving the trees still partially rooted. The broadening of the channel must have slowed down the current a good deal, and it appears never to have been strong enough to scour out below the tenaciously clinging roots. The former lords of the forest are all dead, of course, but still they keep their places, inclining down-stream perhaps twenty-degrees from their former proud perpendicular, and firmly anch.o.r.ed. It takes careful steering to thread the maze even in a small boat, but the current is hardly fast enough to make a collision of serious moment.

The current quickened for a while beyond "Snag Town" and then began slowing again, the river broadening and deepening meanwhile. I thought I read the signs aright and asked Blackmore. "Yes," he replied with a confirmatory nod; "it's the river backing up for its big jump. Stop pulling a minute and you can probably hear the rapid growling even here." Andy and I lay on our oars and listened. There it was surely enough, deep and distant but unmistakable--the old familiar drum-roll of a big river beating for the charge. It was tremendous music--heavy, air-quivering, earth-shaking; more the diapason of a great cataract than an ordinary rapid, it seemed to me. I was right. Surprise is anything but an ordinary rapid.

We pulled for a half hour or more down a broad stretch of slackening water that was more like a lake than a river. Out of the looming shadows of the banks for a s.p.a.ce, mountain heights that had been cut off leaped boldly into view, and to left and right lifted a lofty sky-line notched with snowy peaks rising from corrugated fields of bottle-green glacier ice. Mt. Sanford, loftiest of the Selkirks, closed the end of the bosky perspective of Gold Creek, and the coldly chiselled pyramids of Lyell, Bryce and Columbia p.r.i.c.ked out the high points on the Continental Divide of the Rockies. We held the vivid double panorama--or quadruple, really, for both ranges were reflected in the quiet water--for as long as it took us to pull to a beach at the narrowing lower end of the long lake-like stretch above the rapids, finally to lose it as suddenly as it had been opened to us behind the imminently-rearing river walls.

The two trappers of whom the fire-ranger at Beavermouth had spoken were waiting for us on the bank. They had permits for trapping on a couple of the creeks below Kinbasket Lake, and were getting down early in order to lay out their lines by the time the season opened a month or so hence.

They had been packing their stuff over the three-mile portage to the foot of the rapids during the last three weeks, and now, with nothing left to go but their canoes, were free to give us a hand if we wanted them. Blackmore replied that he could save time and labour by running and lining the rapids. "Besides," he added with a grin, "I take it these movie people have come out to get pictures of a river trip, not an overland journey." The trappers took the dig in good part, but one of them riposted neatly. Since he was out for furs, he said, and was not taking pictures or boot-legging, time was not much of an object. The main thing with him was to reach his destination with his winter's outfit. If all the river was like Surprise Rapids he would be quite content to go overland all the way. Neither of them made any comments on the stage of the water or offered any suggestions in connection with the job we had ahead. That was one comfort of travelling with Blackmore. In all matters pertaining to river work his judgment appeared to be beyond criticism. If he was tackling a stunt with a considerable element of risk in it, that was his own business. No one else knew the dangers, and how to avoid them, so well as he.

Blackmore looked to the trim of the boat carefully before shoving off, putting her down a bit more by the stern it seemed to me. He cautioned me on only one point as we pulled across the quarter of mile to where the banks ran close together and the quiet water ended. "Don't never dip deep in the white water, and 'specially in the swirls," he said, stressing each word. "If you do, a whirlpool is more'n likely to carry your oar-blade under the boat and tear out half the side 'fore you can clear your oar-lock. That's the way that patched gunnel next you came to get smashed." As we were about at the point where it is well to confine all the talking done in the boat to one man, I refrained from replying that I had been told the same thing in a dozen or so languages, on four different continents, and by "skippers" with black, yellow and copper as well as white skins, at fairly frequent intervals during the last fifteen years. There were enough slips I might make, but that of dipping deep in rough water was hardly likely to be one of them.