At
One Place, Called Symond's Yat, It Makes A Curve So Great, That If We
Was To Get Out Of
Our boat and walk across the land, we would have to
walk less than half a mile before we came
To the river again; but to
row around the curve as we did, we had to go five miles.
Every now and then we came to rapids. I didn't count them, but I think
there must have been about one to every mile, where the river-bed was
full of rocks, and where the water rushed furiously around and over
them. If we had been rowing ourselves we would have gone on shore and
camped when we came to the first of these rapids, for we wouldn't have
supposed our little boat could go through those tumbling, rushing
waters; but old Samivel knew exactly how the narrow channel, just deep
enough sometimes for our boat to float without bumping the bottom, runs
and twists itself among the hidden rocks, and he'd stand up in the bow
and push the boat this way and that until it slid into the quiet water
again, and he sat down to his oars. After we had been through four or
five of these we didn't feel any more afraid than if we had been
sitting together on our own little back porch.
As for the banks of this river, they got more and more beautiful as we
went on. There was high hills with some castles, woods and crags and
grassy slopes, and now and then a lordly mansion or two, and great
massive, rocky walls, bedecked with vines and moss, rising high up
above our heads and shutting us out from the world.
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