A CHAPTER ABOUT RAFTING.
[Illustration: "SNUBBING" THE RAFT.]
Lake Marsh gave us four days of variable sailing on its waters,
when, on the 29th of June, we emerged from it and once more felt the
exhilaration of a rapid course on a swift river, an exhilaration that
was not allowed to die rapidly away, by reason of the great amount
of exercise we had to go through in managing the raft in its many
eccentric phases of navigation. On the lakes, whether in storm or
still weather, one man stationed at the stern oar of the raft had been
sufficient, as long as he kept awake, nor was any great harm done if
he fell asleep in a quiet breeze, but once on the river an additional
oarsman at the bow sweep was imperatively needed, for at short turns or
sudden bends, or when hearing half-sunken bowlders or tangled masses of
driftwood, or bars of sand, mud or gravel, or while steering clear of
eddies and slack water, it was often necessary to do some very lively
work at both ends of the raft in swinging the ponderous contrivance
around to avoid these obstacles, and in the worst cases two or three
other men assisted the oarsmen in their difficult task. Just how much
strength a couple of strong men could put on a steering sweep was a
delicate matter to gauge, and too often in the most trying places our
experiments in testing the questions were failures, and with a sharp
snap the oar would part, a man or two would sit down violently without
stopping to pick out the most luxurious places, and the craft like
a wild animal unshackled would go plowing through the fallen timber
that lined the banks, or bring up on the bar or bowlder we had been
working hard to avoid. We slowly became practical oar makers, however,
and toward the latter part of the journey had some crude but effective
implements that defied annihilation.
As we leisurely and lazily crept along the lakes somebody would be
driving away _ennui_ by dressing down pins with a hatchet, boring holes
with an auger and driving pins with an ax, until by the time the lakes
were all passed I believe that no two logs crossed each other in the
raft that were not securely pinned at the point of juncture with at
least one pin, and if the logs were large ones with two or three. In
this manner our vessel was as solid as it was possible to make such
a craft, and would bring up against a bowlder with a shock and swing
dizzily around in a six or seven mile current with no more concern than
if it were a slab in a mill race.
I believe I have made the remark in a previous chapter that managing a
raft--at least our method of managing a raft--on a lake was a tolerably
simple affair, especially with a favorable wind, and to tell the truth,
one can not manage it at all except with a favorable wind. It was
certainly the height of simplicity when compared with its navigation
upon a river, although at first sight one might perhaps think the
reverse; at least I had thought so, and from the conversation of the
whites and Indians of south-eastern Alaska, I knew that their opinions
coincided with mine; but I was at length compelled to hold differently
from them in this matter, as in many others. Especially was this
navigation difficult on a swift river like the Yukon, and I know of
none that can maintain a flow of more even rapidity from source to
mouth than this great stream. It is not very hard to keep a raft or any
floating object in the center of the current of a stream, even if left
alone at times, but the number of things which present themselves from
time to time to drag it out of this channel seems marvelous.
Old watermen and rafting lumbermen know that while a river is rising
it is hard to keep the channel, even the driftwood created by the rise
clinging to the shores of the stream. Accordingly they are anxious
for the moment when this driftwood begins to float along the main
current and out in the middle of the stream, for then they know the
water is subsiding, and from that point it requires very little effort
to keep in the swiftest current. Should this drift matter be equally
distributed over the running water it is inferred that the river is
at "a standstill," as they say. An adept can closely judge of the
variations and stage of water by this means.
In a river with soft or earthy banks (and in going the whole length
of the Yukon, over two thousand miles, we saw several varieties of
shores), the swift current, in which one desires to keep when the
current is the motive power, nears the shores only at points or curves,
where it digs out the ground into steep perpendicular banks, which if
at all high make it impossible to find a camping place for the night,
and out of this swift current the raft had to be rowed to secure a camp
at evening, while breaking camp next morning we had to work it back
into the current again. Nothing could be more aggravating than after
leaving this swift current to find a camp, as evening fell, to see no
possible chance for such a place on the side we had chosen and to go
crawling along in slack water while trees and brushes swept rapidly
past borne on the swift waters we had quitted.
[Illustration: AMONG THE SWEEPERS.]
If the banks of a river are wooded--and no stream can show much denser
growth on its shores than the Yukon--the trees that are constantly
tumbling in from these places that are being undermined, and yet
hanging on by their roots, form a series of _chevaux de frise_ or
_abatis_, to which is given the backwoods cognomen of "sweepers," and
a man on the upper side of a raft plunging through them in a swift
current almost wishes himself a beaver or a muskrat so that he can dive
out and escape.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
Not only is the Yukon equally wooded on its banks with the average
rivers of the world, but this fringe of fallen timber is much greater
in quantity and more formidable in aspect than any found in the
temperate zones. I think I can explain this fact to the satisfaction of
my readers. Taking fig. 1 on this page as representing a cross-section
perpendicular to the trend of a bank of a river in our own climate, the
stumps ss representing trees which if undermined by the water as far as
c will generally fall in along the line cd, and carry away a few trees,
two or three at most, then, as the roots of no more than one such tree
are capable of holding it so as to form an _abatis_ along the bank,
trees so held will lean obliquely down stream and any floating object
will merely brush along on their tips without receiving serious damage.
Figure 2, above, represents a similar sketch of a cross-section on the
banks of the Yukon, especially along its numerous islands, these banks,
as we saw them, being generally from six to eight feet above the level
of the water. This is also about the depth to which the moist marshy
ground freezes solid during the intense cold of the Alaskan winter in
the interior districts, and the banks therefore have the tenacity of
ice to support them; and it is not until the water has excavated as far
as _c_ (five or six times as far as in Figure 1), that the overhanging
mass _csd_ becomes heavy enough to break off the projecting bank along
_cd_. This as a solid frozen body falls downward around the axis _c_,
being too heavy for the water to sweep away, it remains until thawed
out by the river water already but little above freezing, by reason
of the constant influx of glacier streams and from running between
frozen banks. I have roughly attempted to show this process in Fig. 3.
I think any one will acknowledge that the raft R, carried by a swift
current sweeping toward _c_ is not in a very desirable position. Such
a position is bad enough on any river which has but a single line of
trees along its scarp and trending down stream, but on the Yukon it is
unfortunately worse, with every branch and twig ferociously standing at
"charge bayonets," to resist any thing that floats that way. In Fig. 3,
the maximum is depicted just as the bank falls or shortly after; and it
requires but a few days, possibly a week or a fortnight, for all the
outer and most dangerous looking trees to be more or less thoroughly
swept away by the swift current, and a less bristling aspect presented,
the great half frozen mass acting somewhat as a breakwater to further
undermining of the bank for a long while. In many places along the
river, these excavations had gone so far that the bank seemed full of
deep gloomy caves; and as we drifted close by, we could see, and, on
quiet days hear, the dripping from the thawing surface, _c s_ (fig.
2). In other places the half polished surface of the ice in the frozen
ground could be seen in recent fractures as late as July, or even
August.
Often when camped in some desolate spot or floating lazily along,
having seen no inhabitants for days, we would be startled by the sound
of a distant gun-shot on the banks, which would excite our curiosity
to see the savage sportsman; but we soon came to trace these reports
to the right cause, that of falling banks, although not until after we
had several times been deceived. Once or twice we actually saw these
tremendous cavings in of the banks quite near us, and more frequently
than we wanted we floated almost underneath some that were not far from
the crisis of their fate, a fate which we thought might be precipitated
by some accidental collision of our making. By far the most critical
moment was when both the current and a strong wind set in against one
of these banks. On such occasions we were often compelled to tie up to
the bank and wait for better times, or if the danger was confined to a
short stretch we would fight it out until either the whole party was
exhausted or our object was attained.
Whenever an island was made out ahead and it appeared to be near
the course of our drifting, the conflicting guesses we indulged in
as to which shore of the island we should skirt would indicate the
difficulty of making a correct estimate. It takes a peculiarly well
practiced eye to follow with certainty the line of the current of the
stream from the bow of the raft beyond any obstruction in sight a
fair distance ahead, and on more than one occasion our hardest work
with the oars and poles was rewarded by finding ourselves on the very
bar or flat we had been striving to avoid. The position of the sun,
both vertical and horizontal, its brightness and the character of
the clouds, the clearness and swiftness of the water, the nature and
strength of the wind, however lightly it might be blowing, and a dozen
other circumstances had to be taken into account in order to solve this
apparently simple problem. If we could determine at what point in the
upper end of the island the current was parted upon either side (and
at any great distance this was often quite as difficult a problem as
the other), one could often make a correct guess by projecting a tree
directly beyond and over this point against the distant hills. If the
tree crept along these hills to the right, the raft might pass to the
left of the island, and vice versa; this would certainly happen if
the current was not deflected by some bar or shoal between the raft
and the island. And such shoals and bars of gravel, sand and mud are
very frequent obstructions in front of an island--at least it was so
on the Yukon--indeed the coincidence was too frequent to be without
significance. These bars and shoals were not merely prolongations from
the upper point of the island, but submerged islands, so to speak, just
in front of them, and between the two a steamboat could probably pass.
Using tall trees as guides to indicate on which side of the island the
raft might pass was, as I have said, not so easy as appears at first
sight, for unless the tree could be made out directly over the dividing
point of the current, all surmises were of little value. The tall
spruce trees on the right and left flanks of the island in sight were
always the most conspicuous, being fewer in number, and more prominent
in their isolation, than the dense growth of the center of the island,
as it was seen "end on" from above. People were very prone to use these
convenient reference marks in making their calculations, and one can
readily perceive when the trees were near and the island fairly wide,
both of the outer trees would appear to diverge in approaching, and
according as one selected the right or the left of the two trees, one
would infer that our course was to the left or right of the island. As
one stood on the bow--as we always called the down-stream end of the
raft, although it was shaped no differently from the stern--and looked
forward on the water flowing along, the imagination easily conceives
that one can follow up from that position to almost any thing ahead
and see the direction of the current leading straight for it. Eddies
and slack currents, into which a raft is very liable to swing as it
rounds a point with an abrupt turn in the axis of the current, are
all great nuisances, for though one may not get into the very heart
of any of them, yet the sum total of delay in a day's drift is often
considerable, and by a little careful management in steering the raft
these troubles may nearly always be avoided. Of course, one is often
called upon to choose between these and other impediments, more or less
aggravating, so that one's attention is constantly active as the raft
drifts along.
[Illustration]
In a canal-like stream of uniform width, which gives little chance for
eddies or slack water--and the upper Yukon has many long stretches that
answer to this description--every thing goes along smoothly enough
until along toward evening, when the party wishes to go into camp
while the river is tearing along at four or five miles an hour. I defy
any one who has never been similarly situated, to have any adequate
conception of the way in which a ponderous vessel like our raft,
constructed of large logs and loaded with four or five tons of cargo
and crew, will bring up against any obstacle while going at this rate.
If there are no eddies into which it can be rowed or steered and its
progress thereby stopped or at least slackened, it is very hard work
indeed to go into camp, for should the raft strike end on, a side log
or two may be torn out and the vessel transformed by the shock into a
lozenge-shaped affair. Usually, under these circumstances, we would
bring the raft close in shore, and with the bow oar hold its head well
out into the stream, while with the steering oar the stern end would
be thrown against the bank and there held, scraping along as firmly as
two or three men could do it (see diagram above), and this frictional
brake would be kept up steadily until we slowed down a little, when one
or two, or even half-a-dozen persons would jump ashore at a favorable
spot, and with a rope complete the slackening until it would warrant
our twisting the rope around a tree on the bank and a cross log on the
raft, when from both places the long rope would be slowly allowed to
pay out under strong and increasing friction, or "snubbing" as logmen
call it, and this would bring the craft to a standstill in water so
swift as to boil up over the stern logs, whereupon it would receive a
series of snug lashings. If the position was not favorable for camping
we would slowly "drop" the craft down stream by means of the rope to
some better site, never allowing her to proceed at a rate of speed that
we could not readily control. If, however, we were unsuccessful in
making our chosen camping ground and had drifted below it, there was
not sufficient power in our party, nor even in the strongest rope we
had, ever to get the craft up stream in the average current, whether by
tracking or any other means, to the intended spot.
Good camping places were not to be had in every stretch of the river,
and worse than all, they had to be selected a long way ahead in order
to be able to make them, with our slow means of navigation, from the
middle of the broad river where we usually were.
Oftentimes a most acceptable place would be seen just abreast of it,
having until then been concealed by some heavily wooded spur or point,
and then of course it would be too late to reach it with our slow
craft, while to saunter along near shore, so as to take immediate
advantage of such a possible spot, was to sacrifice a good deal of our
rapid progress. To run from swift into slacker water could readily be
accomplished by simply pointing the craft in the direction one wanted
to go, but the reverse process was not so easy, at least by the same
method. I suppose the proper way to manage so clumsy a concern as a
raft, would be by means of side oars and rowing it end on (and this
we did on the lakes in making a camp or in gaining the shore when a
head wind set in), but as our two oars at bow and stern were the most
convenient for the greater part of the work, we used them entirely,
always rowing our bundle of logs broadside on to the point desired,
provided that no bars or other obstacles interfered. We generally kept
the bow end inclined to the shore that we were trying to reach, a plan
that was of service, as I have shown, in passing from swift to slack
water, and in a three mile current by using our oars rowing broadside
on we could keep at an angle of about thirty degrees from the axis of
the stream as we made shoreward in this position. The knowledge of this
fact enabled us to make a rough calculation as to the point at which
we should touch the bank. The greater or less swiftness of the current
would of course vary this angle and our calculations accordingly.
Our bundles of effects on the two corduroy decks made quite high piles
fore and aft, and when a good strong wind was blowing--and Alaska in
the summer is the land of wind--we had by way of sail power a spread
of broadside area that was incapable of being lowered. More frequently
than was pleasant the breeze carried us along under "sweepers" or
dragged us over bars or drove us down unwelcome channels of slack
water. In violent gales we were often actually held against the bank,
all movement in advance being effectually checked. A mild wind was
always welcome, for in the absence of a breeze when approaching the
shore the mosquitoes made existence burdensome.
During hot days on the wide open river--singular as it may seem so
near the Arctic Circle--the sun would strike down from overhead with
a blistering effect and a bronzing effect from its reflection in the
dancing waters that made one feel as though he were floating on the
Nile, Congo or Amazon, or any where except in the very shadow of the
Arctic Circle. Roughly improvised tent flies and flaps helped us to
screen ourselves to a limited extent from the tropical torment, but
if hung top high, the stern oarsman, who had charge of the "ship,"
could see nothing ahead on his course, and the curtain would have
to come down. No annoyance could seem more singular in the Arctic
and sub-Arctic zones than a blistering sun or a swarm of mosquitoes,
and yet I believe my greatest discomforts in those regions came from
these same causes, certainly from the latter. Several times our
thermometer registered but little below 100° Fahrenheit in the shade,
and the weather seemed much warmer even than that, owing to the bright
reflections that gleamed from the water upon our faces.
"Cut offs" through channels that led straight across were often most
deceptive affairs, the swifter currents nearly always swinging around
the great bends of the river. Especially bad was a peculiarly seductive
"cut-off" with a tempting by swift current as you entered it, caused
by its flowing over a shallow bar, whereupon the current would rapidly
and almost immediately deepen and would consequently slow down to a
rate that was provoking beyond measure, especially as one saw one's
self overtaken by piece after piece of drift-timber that by keeping
to the main channel had "taken the longest way around as the shortest
way home," and beaten us by long odds in the race. And worse than all
it was not always possible to avoid getting in these side "sloughs
of despond," even when we had learned their tempting little tricks of
offering us a swifter current at the entrance, for this very swiftness
produced a sort of suction on the surface water that drew in every
thing that passed within a distance of the width of its entrance.
Of submerged obstructions, snags were of little account, for the great
ponderous craft would go plowing through and casting aside some of the
most formidable of them. I doubt very much if snags did us as much harm
as benefit, for as they always indicated shoal water, and were easily
visible, especially with glasses, they often served us as beacons. I
saw very few of the huge snags which have received the appellation of
"sawyers" on the Mississippi and Missouri, and are so much dreaded by
the navigators of those waters.
Sand, mud and gravel bars were by far the worst obstruction we had
to contend with, and I think I have given them in the order of their
general perversity in raft navigation, sand being certainly the worst
and gravel the slightest.
[Illustration: PRYING THE RAFT OFF A BAR.]
Sand bars and spits were particularly aggravating, and when the great
gridiron of logs ran up on one of them in a swift current there was
"fun ahead," to use a western expression of negation. Sometimes the
mere jumping overboard of all the crew would lighten the craft so that
she would float forward a few yards, and in lucky instances might clear
the obstruction; but this was not often the case, and those who made
preparations for hard work were seldom disappointed. In a swift current
the running water would sweep out the sand around the logs of the raft
until its buoyancy would prevent its sinking any deeper, and out of
this rut the great bulky thing would have to be lifted before it would
budge an inch in a lateral direction, and when this was accomplished,
and, completely fagged out, we would stop to take a breath or two, we
would often be gratified by seeing our noble craft sink down again,
necessitating a repetition of the process. The simplest way to get
off a sand bar was to find (by sounding with a stick or simply wading
around), the point nearest to a deep navigable channel and then to
swing the raft, end for end, up stream, even against the swiftest
current that might come boiling over the upper logs, until that channel
was reached. There was no more happy moment in a day's history than
when, after an hour or so had been spent in prying the vessel inch by
inch against the current, we could finally see the current catch it on
the same side upon which we were working and perform the last half of
our task in a few seconds, where perhaps we had spent as many hours
upon our portion of the work. At one bad place, on the upper end of an
island, we had to swing our forty-two foot corvette around four times.
Our longest detention by a sand bar was three hours and fifty minutes.
Mud bars were not nearly so bad, unless the material was of a clayey
consistency, when a little adhesiveness would be added to the other
impediments, and again, as we always endeavored to keep in the swift
water we seldom encountered a mud bar. But when one occurred near to
a camping place, it materially interfered with our wading ashore with
our heavy camping effects on our backs, and would reduce our rubber
boots to a deplorable looking condition. Elsewhere, it was possible to
pry the raft right through a mud bank, by dint of muscle and patience,
and then we could sit down on the outer logs of the deck and wash our
boots in the water at leisure as we floated along. Our raft drew from
twenty to twenty-two inches of water, and of course it could not ground
in any thing deeper, so that good rubber boots coming up over the
thighs kept our feet comparatively dry when overboard; but there were
times when we were compelled to get in almost to our middle; and when
the water was so swift that it boiled up over their tops and filled
them they were about as useless an article as can be imagined, so that
we went into all such places barefooted.
The best of all the bars were those of gravel, and the larger and
coarser the pebbles the better. When the pebbles were well cemented
into a firm bed by a binding of clay almost as solid and unyielding as
rock, we could ask nothing better, and in such cases we always went to
work with cheerful prospects of a speedy release. By simply lifting
the raft with pries the swift current throws it forward, and since it
does not settle as in sand, every exertion tells. By turning the raft
broadside to the current and prying or "biting" at each end of the
"boat" alternately, with our whole force of pries, leaving the swift
water to throw her forward, we passed over gravel bars on which I do
not think the water was over ten or eleven inches deep, although the
raft drew twice as much. One of the gravel bars over which we passed in
this manner was fully thirty or forty yards in length.
In aggravated cases of whatever nature the load would have to be
taken off, carried on our backs through the water and placed on the
shore, and when the raft was cleared or freed from the obstruction it
would be brought alongside the bank at the very first favorable spot
for reloading. Such cases occurred fully a score of times during
our voyage. When the raft stranded on a bar with the water on each
side so deep that we could not wade ashore, the canoe was used for
"lightering the load," an extremely slow process which, fortunately, we
were obliged to employ only once on the whole raft journey, although
several times in wading the water came up to our waists before we could
get to shore. In fact, with a heavy load on one's back or shoulders,
it is evidently much easier to wade through water of that depth and
proportional current than through very swift water over shallow bars.
Looking back, it seems almost miraculous that a raft could make a
voyage of over thirteen hundred miles, the most difficult part of
which was unknown, starting at the very head where the stream was so
narrow that the raft would have been brought at a standstill if it
swung out of a straight course end on (as it did in the Payer Rapids),
and covering nearly two months of daily encounters with snags and
bowlders, sticking on bars and shooting rapids, and yet get through
almost unscathed. When I started to build this one on Lake Lindeman
I had anticipated constructing two or three of these primitive craft
before I could exchange to good and sufficient native or civilized
transportation.
The raft is undoubtedly the oldest form of navigation extant, and
undoubtedly the worst; it is interesting to know just how useful the
raft can be as an auxiliary to geographical exploration, and certainly
my raft journey was long enough to test it in this respect.
The raft, of course, can move in one direction only, viz.: with the
current, and therefore its use must be restricted to streams whose
upper waters can be reached by the explorer. The traveler must be
able to escape by the mouth of the stream or by some divergent trail
lower down, unless his explorations prove the river to be navigable
for such craft as he finds on its lower waters, when he may use these
for returning. The building of a raft requires the presence of good,
fair-sized timber along the stream. The river too, must offer no falls
of any great size. My journey, however, has demonstrated that a well
constructed raft can go any where, subject to the above restrictions,
that a boat can, at least such a boat as is usually employed by
explorers.
I know of nothing that can give an explorer a better opportunity
to delineate the topography of the surrounding country with such
instruments as are commonly used in assisting dead reckoning, than
is afforded by floating down a river. I believe the steady movement
with the current makes "dead reckoning" much more exact than with a
boat, where the rate of progress is variable, where one hour is spent
in drifting as a raft, another in rowing, and a third in sailing with
a changeable wind, and where each mode of progress is so abruptly
exchanged for another. Any steady pace, such as the walking of a man
or a horse, or the floating of a raft carefully kept in the axis of
the current, makes dead reckoning so exact, if long practiced, as
often to astonish the surveyor himself, but every thing depends upon
this steadiness of motion. The errors in dead reckoning of Mr. Homan,
my topographer, in running from Pyramid Harbor in Chilkat Inlet to
Fort Yukon, both carefully determined by astronomical observations and
over a thousand miles apart, was less than one per cent., a fact which
proves that rafting as a means of surveying may be ranked with any
method that requires walking or riding, and far exceeds any method in
use by explorers ascending a stream, as witness any map of the Yukon
River that attempts to show the position of Fort Yukon, before it was
astronomically determined by Captain Raymond. Meridian observations of
the sun for latitude are hard to obtain, for the reader already knows
what a task it is to get a raft into camp. This difficulty of course
will vary with the size of the raft, for one as large as ours would
not always be needed and a small one can be more readily handled in
exploration. While rafting, field photography, now so much used by
explorers, is very difficult, as it can only be achieved at camping
places unless the apparatus is carried ashore in a canoe, if the
raftsmen have one; and the ease with which separated persons can lose
each other along a river full of islands makes this kind of work a
little uncertain, and the services of a good artist more valuable.
This summary covers nearly all the main points that are strictly
connected with geographical exploration, in the meaning ordinarily
accepted; but on expeditions where this exploration is the main object
there are often other matters of a scientific nature to be taken into
account, such as the geology, botany, and zoölogy of the districts
traversed, to which the question of geographical distribution is
important, and for all these objects researches by means of a raft are
at considerable disadvantage.
Also in rafting there is a slight tendency to over-estimate the length
of the stream, although the map may be perfectly accurate. In the
figure on page 152, the axis AA' is undoubtedly the accepted line on
which to estimate and measure the length of the stream between those
two points, and it is equally evident to one familiar with the currents
of a river that some such line as RR' would represent the course of a
floating raft, and the excess of RR' over AA', both being developed,
would be the error mentioned. In this figure the relative curves are
exaggerated to show the principle more clearly. Again, every island and
shoal would materially affect this somewhat mathematical plan, but I
think even these would tend to produce an over-estimate.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Drifting close along the shores of an island, and nearing its lower
termination, we occasionally were delayed in a singular manner, unless
prompt to avoid it. A long, narrow island, with tapering ends, and
lying directly in the course of the current, gave us no trouble; but
oftentimes these lower ends were very blunt, and the currents at the
two sides came at all angles with respect to the island and each other,
and this was especially true of large groupings of islands situated in
abrupt bends of the river. To take about the worst case of this nature
that we met, imagine a blunted island with the current at either side
coming in at an angle of about forty-five degrees to the shore line,
or at right angles to each other, as I have tried to show in figure
on this page, the arrows showing the current. At some point below the
island the recurving and ex-curving waters neutralize each other in
a huge whirlpool (W). Between W and the island the waters, if swift,
would pour back in strong, dancing waves like tide-rips, and in some
places with such force as to cut a channel (C) into the island. It is
evident that with the raft at R, it is necessary to row to starboard as
far as R' before W is reached, as otherwise it would be carried back
against the island. We got caught in one violent whirlpool that turned
the huge raft around so rapidly that I believe the tender stomachs
of those prone to sea-sickness would soon have weakened if we had
not escaped by vigorous efforts. At great angles of the swift water
and broad-based islands I have seen the whirlpool when nearly half a
mile from the island, and they were usually visible for three or four
hundred yards if worth noticing. So many conditions were required for
the creation of these obstacles that they were not common.