But This Is To Compare The Full-Length
Portrait With The Miniature.
It is the grandeur of the scale
of the best of the American scenery that so strikes the
European.
Variety, however, has its charms; and before one
has travelled fifteen hundred miles on the same river - as
one may easily do in America - one begins to sigh for the
Rhine, or even for a trip from London to Greenwich, with a
white-bait dinner at the end of it.
The day after, we descended the Cascades. They are the
beginning of an immense fall in the level, and form a
succession of rapids nearly two miles long. The excitement
of this passage is rather too great for pleasure. It is like
being run away with by a 'motor' down a steep hill. The bow
of the canoe is often several feet below the stern, as if
about to take a 'header.' The water, in glassy ridges and
dark furrows, rushes headlong, and dashes itself madly
against the reefs which crop up everywhere. There is no
time, one thinks, to choose a course, even if steerage, which
seems absurd, were possible. One is hurled along at railway
speed. The upreared rock, that a moment ago seemed a hundred
yards off, is now under the very bow of the canoe. One
clenches one's teeth, holds one's breath, one's hour is
surely come. But no - a shout from the Indians, a magic
stroke of the paddle in the bow, another in the stern, and
the dreaded crag is far above out heads, far, far behind;
and, for the moment, we are gliding on - undrowned.
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