The morning broke gray and lowering, and the clouds rolled in heavy
masses across the sky. I was sitting out on a log washing a shirt, and
not distinguishing myself as a laundryman either, for one shirt will
become excessively dirty in a week, and no canoeist can have more than
that, as will be seen when you consider that he has to carry
everything which he owns on his back. My guide had packed up our
little “kit” and deposited it skilfully in the _Necoochee_--a
sixteen-foot canoe of the Rice Lake pattern.
We were about to start on a cruise down a river which the lumbermen
said could not be “run,” as it was shallow and rocky. We could find no
one who had been down it, and so, not knowing anything about it, we
regarded it as a pleasant prospect. “Harrison,” being a professional
guide and hunter, had mostly come in contact with people--or “sports,”
as he called them--who had no sooner entered the woods than they were
overcome with a desire to slay. No fatigue or exertion was too great
when the grand purpose was to kill the deer and despoil the trout
streams, but to go wandering aimlessly down a stream which by general
consent was impracticable for boats, and then out into the clearings
where the mountain-spring was left behind, and where logs and
mill-dams and agriculturists took the place of the deer and the trout,
was a scheme which never quite got straightened out in his mind. With
many misgivings, and a very clear impression that I was mentally
deranged, “Has” allowed that “we’re all aboard.”
We pushed out into the big lake and paddled. As we skirted the shores
the wind howled through the giant hemlocks, and the ripples ran away
into white-caps on the far shore. As I wielded my double-blade paddle
and instinctively enjoyed the wildness of the day, I also indulged in
a conscious calculation of how long it would take my shirt to dry on
my back. It is such a pity to mix a damp shirt up with the wild storm,
as it hurries over the dark woods and the black water, that I felt
misgivings; but, to be perfectly accurate, they divided my attention,
and, after all, man is only noble by fits and starts.
We soon reached the head of the river, and a water-storage dam and a
mile of impassable rapids made a “carry” or “portage” necessary.
Slinging our packs and taking the seventy-pound canoe on our
shoulders, we started down the trail. The torture of this sort of
thing is as exquisitely perfect in its way as any ever devised. A
trunk-porter in a summer hotel simply does for a few seconds what we
do by the hour, and as for reconciling this to an idea of physical
enjoyment, it cannot be done. It’s a subtle mental process altogether
indefinable; but your enthusiast is a person who would lose all if he
reasoned any, and to suffer like an anchorite is always a part of a
sportsman’s programme. The person who tilts back in a chair on the
veranda of a summer hotel, while he smokes cigars and gazes vacantly
into space, is your only true philosopher; but he is not a sportsman.
The woods and the fields and the broad roll of the ocean do not beckon
to him to come out among them. He detests all their sensations, and
believes nothing holy except the dinner-hour, and with his bad
appetite that too is flat, stale, and unprofitable. A real sportsman,
of the nature-loving type, must go tramping or paddling or riding
about over the waste places of the earth, with his dinner in his
pocket. He is alive to the terrible strain of the “carry,” and to the
quiet pipe when the day is done. The camp-fire contemplation, the
beautiful quiet of the misty morning on the still water, enrapture
him, and his eye dilates, his nerves tingle, and he is in a
conflagration of ecstasy. When he is going--going--faster--faster into
the boil of the waters, he hears the roar and boom ahead, and the
black rocks crop up in thickening masses to dispute his way. He is
fighting a game battle with the elements, and they are remorseless. He
may break his leg or lose his life in the tip-over which is imminent,
but the fool is happy--let him die.
[Illustration: THE PORTAGE.]
But we were left on the “carry,” and it is with a little thrill of joy
and the largest sigh of relief possible when we again settle the boat
in the water. Now you should understand why it is better to have one
shirt and wash it often. My “canoe kit” is the best arranged and the
most perfect in the world, as no other canoeist will possibly admit,
but which is nevertheless a fact. One blanket, a light shelter-tent, a
cooking outfit, which folds up in a sort of Japanese way, a light axe,
two canvas packs, and tea, bacon, and flour. This does not make long
reading, but it makes a load for a man when it’s all packed up, and a
canoeist’s baggage must be cut to the strength of his back. It is a
great piece of confidence in which I will indulge you when I caution
you not to pick out invalids for canoe companions. If a _burro_ would
take kindly to backwoods navigation, I should enjoy the society of
one, though it would not be in the nature of a _burro_ to swing an
axe, as indeed there are many fine gentlemen who cannot do a good job
at that; and if one at least of the party cannot, the camp-fires will
go out early at nights, and it is more than probable that the
companions will have less than twenty toes between them at the end of
the cruise.
All these arrangements being perfected, you are ready to go ahead, and
in the wilderness you have only one anxiety, and that is about the
“grub.” If the canoe turn over, the tea, the sugar, and the flour will
mix up with the surrounding elements, and only the bacon will remain
to nourish you until you strike the clearings, and there are few men
this side 70° north latitude who will gormandize on that alone.
The long still water is the mental side of canoeing, as the rapid is
the life and movement. The dark woods tower on either side, and the
clear banks, full to their fat sides, fringed with trailing vines and
drooping ferns, have not the impoverished look of civilized rivers.
The dark water wells along, and the branches droop to kiss it. In
front the gray sky is answered back by the water reflection, and the
trees lie out as though hung in the air, forming a gateway, always
receding. Here and there an old monarch of the forest has succumbed to
the last blow and fallen across the stream. It reaches out ever so far
with its giant stems, and the first branch had started sixty feet from
the ground. You may have to chop a way through, or you may force your
canoe through the limbs and gather a crowd of little broken branches
to escort you along the stream. The original forest tree has a
character all its own, and I never see one but I think of the artist
who drew second-growth timber and called it “the forest primeval.” The
quietness of the woods, with all their solemnity, permitting no bright
or overdressed plant to obtrude itself, is rudely shocked by the
garish painted thing as the yellow polished _Necoochee_ glides
among them. The water-rat dives with a tremendous splash as he sees
the big monster glide by his sedge home. The kingfisher springs away
from his perch on the dead top with loud chatterings when we glide
into his notice. The crane takes off from his grassy “set back” in a
deliberate manner, as though embarking on a tour to Japan, a thing not
to be hurriedly done. The mink eyes you from his sunken log, and,
grinning in his most savage little manner, leaps away. These have all
been disturbed in their wild homes as they were about to lunch off the
handiest trout, and no doubt they hate us in their liveliest manner;
but the poor trout under the boat compensate us with their thanks. The
mud-turtle is making his way up-stream, as we can tell by the row of
bubbles which arise in his wake; and the “skaters,” as I call the
little insects which go skipping about like a lawyer’s point in an
argument, part as we go by. The mosquitoes, those desperate little
villains who dispute your happiness in the woods, are there, but they
smell the tar and oil of our war-paint, and can only hum in their
anger. A stick cracks in the brush, and with all the dash and
confidence of a city girl as she steps from her front door, a little
spotted fawn walks out on a sedge bank from among the alders. He does
not notice us, but in his stupid little way looks out the freshest
water-grass, and the hunter in the stern of the boat cuts his paddle
through the water, and the canoe glides silently up until right under
his nose. We are still and silent. The little thing raises its head
and looks us full in the eye, and then continues to feed as before. I
talk to him quietly, and say, “Little man, do not come near the ponds
or the rivers, for you will not live to have five prongs on your
antlers if any one but such good people as we see you.” He looks up,
and seems to say, “You are noisy, but I do not care.” “Now run; and
if you ever see anything in the forest which resembles us, run for
your life”; and with a bound the little innocent has regained the dark
aisles of the woods. You loll back on your pack, your pipe going
lazily; your hat is off; you moralize, and think thoughts which have
dignity. You drink in the spell of the forest, and dream of the birch
barks and the red warriors who did the same thing a couple of
centuries since. But as thoughts vary so much in individuals, and have
but an indirect bearing on canoeing, I will proceed without them.
The low swamp, with its soft timber, gives place to hills and beech
ridges, and the old lord of the forest for these last hundred years
towers up majestically. The smaller trees fight for the sunlight, and
thus the ceaseless war of nature goes on quietly, silently, and alone.
The miserable “witch-hoppel” leads its lusty plebeian life, satisfied
to spring its half-dozen leaves, and not dreaming to some day become
an oak. The gentle sigh of the forest, the hum of insects, and the
chatter and peal of the birds have gone into harmony with a long,
deep, swelling sound, becoming louder and louder, until finally it
drowns all else.
[Illustration: BLACK WATER]
[Illustration: THE FAWN]
[Illustration: BREAKING A JAM.]
The canoe now glides more rapidly. The pipe is laid one side. The
paddle is grasped firmly, and with a firm eye I regard the “grub” pack
which sits up in the bow, and resolve to die if necessary in order
that it may not sink if we turn over. The river turns, and the ominous
growl of the rapids is at hand.
“Hold her--hold her now--to the right of the big rock; then swing to
the far shore: if we go to the right, we are gone.”
“All right; let her stern come round,” and we drop away.
No talking now, but with every nerve and muscle tense, and your eye on
the boil of the water, you rush along. You back water and paddle, the
stern swings, she hangs for an instant, she falls in the current, and
with a mad rush you take it like a hunting-man a six-bar gate. Now
paddle, paddle, paddle. It looks bad--we cannot make it--yes--all
right, and we are on the far shore, with the shallows on the other
side. This little episode was successful, but, as you well know, it
cannot last. The next rift, and with a bump she is hung upon a sunken
rock, and--jump! jump!--we both flounder overboard in any way
possible, so it is well and quickly done. One man loses his hold, the
other swings the boat off, and, kicking and splashing for a foothold,
the demoralized outfit shoots along. At last one is found, and then at
a favorable rock we embark again.
You are now wet, but the tea and sugar are safe, so it’s a small
matter. A jam of logs and tops is “hung up” on a particularly nasty
place, and you have a time getting the boat around it. You walk on
rotten tops while the knots stick up beneath you like sabres. “Has”
floats calmly out to sea, as it were, on a detached log which he is
cutting, and with a hopeless look of despair he totters, while I yell,
“Save the axe, ---- you--save the axe!” and over he goes, only to get
wet and very disgusted, both of which will wear off in time. For a
mile the water is so shallow that the boat will not run loaded, and we
lead her along as we wade, now falling in over our heads, sliding on
slippery stones, hurting our feet, wondering why we had come at all.
The boat gets loose, and my heart stands still as the whole boat-load
of blankets and grub with our pipes and tobacco started off for the
settlements--or “drifting to thunder,” as Bret Harte said of Chiquita.
There was rather a lively and enthusiastic pursuit instituted then,
the details of which are forgotten, as my mind was focussed on the
grub-pack, but we got her. About this time the soles let go on my
tennis shoes, and my only pair of trousers gave way. These things,
however, become such mere details as to be scarcely noticed when you
have travelled since sunrise up to your waist in water, and are tired,
footsore, and hungry. It is time to go ashore and camp.
You scrape away a rod square of dirt, chunks, witch-hoppel, and dead
leaves, and make a fire. You dry your clothes while you wear the
blanket and the guide the shelter-tent, and to a casual observer it
would look as though the savage had come again; but he would detect a
difference, because a white man in a blanket is about as inspiring a
sight as an Indian with a plug-hat.
[Illustration: HUNG UP]
Finally the coffee boils, the tent is up, and the bough bed laid down.
You lean against the dead log and swap lies with the guide; and the
greatest hunters I have ever known have all been magnificent liars.
The two go together. I should suspect a man who was deficient. Since
no one ever believes hunters’ yarns, it has come to be a pleasurable
pastime, in which a man who has not hunted considerably can’t lie
properly without offending the intelligence of that part of his
audience who have.
The morning comes too soon, and after you are packed up and the boat
loaded, if you are in a bad part of the river you do this: you put
away your pipe, and with a grimace and a shudder you step out into the
river up to your neck and get wet. The morning is cold, and I, for
one, would not allow a man who was perfectly dry to get into my boat,
for fear he might have some trepidation about getting out promptly if
the boat was “hung up” on a rock; and in the woods all nature is
subservient to the “grub.”
Hour after hour we waded along. A few rods of still water and “Has”
would cut off large chews of tobacco, and become wonderfully cynical
as to the caprices of the river. The still water ends around the next
point. You charge the thing nobly, but end up in the water up to your
neck with the “grub” safe, and a mile or so more of wading in
prospect.
Then the river narrows, and goes tumbling off down a dark cañon cut
through the rocks. We go ashore and “scout the place,” and then begin
to let the boat down on a line. We hug the black sides like ants,
while the water goes to soapsuds at our feet. The boat bobs and
rocks, and is nearly upset in a place where we cannot follow it
through. We must take it up a ledge about thirty feet high, and after
puffing and blowing and feats of maniacal strength, we at last have it
again in the water. After some days of this thing we found from a
statistician we had dropped 1100 feet in about fifty-one miles, and
with the well-known propensity of water to flow downhill, it can be
seen that difficulties were encountered. You cannot carry a boat in
the forest, and you will discover enough reasons why in a five-minute
trail to make their enumeration tiresome. The zest of the whole thing
lies in not knowing the difficulties beforehand, and then, if properly
equipped, a man who sits at a desk the year through can find no
happier days than he will in his canoe when the still waters run
through the dark forests and the rapid boils below.