of a river between perpendicular rocks of great height, which frequently
approach each other so closely overhead as to form a kind of tunnel over
the stream, which foams along below, half choked up by fallen fragments.
Between the mouth of the Sweet Water and Goat island, there is probably a
fall of three hundred feet, and that was principally made in the canons
before us; as, without them, the water was comparatively smooth. As we
neared the ridge, the river made a sudden turn, and swept squarely down
against one of the walls of the canon, with great velocity, and so steep a
descent that it had, to the eye, the appearance of an inclined plane. When
we launched into this, the men jumped overboard, to check the velocity of
the boat; but were soon in water up to their necks, and our boat ran on.
But we succeeded in bringing her to a small point of rocks on the right,
at the mouth of the canon. Here was a kind of elevated sand-beach, not
many yards square, backed by the rocks; and around the point the river
swept at a right angle. Trunks of trees deposited on jutting points,
twenty or thirty feet above, and other marks, showed that the water here
frequently rose to a considerable height. The ridge was of the same
decomposing granite already mentioned, and the water had worked the
surface, in many places, into a wavy surface of ridges and holes. We
ascended the rocks to reconnoitre the ground, and from the summit the
passage appeared to be a continued cataract, foaming over many
obstructions, and broken by a number of small falls. We saw nowhere a fall
answering to that which had been described to us as having twenty or
twenty-five feet; but still concluded this to be the place in question,
as, in the season of floods, the rush of the river against the wall would
produce a great rise; and the waters, reflected squarely off, would
descend through the passage in a sheet of foam, having every appearance of
a large fall. Eighteen years previous to this time, as I have subsequently
learned from himself, Mr. Fitzpatrick, somewhere above on this river, had
embarked with a valuable cargo of beaver. Unacquainted with the stream,