[1] For the benefit of those who have forgotten, or may never have known, I will state that "Green River" was the name of a brand of whisky consumed by ancient Americans with considerable gusto. L. R. F.
"No good lining," the "Skipper" announced decidedly, as we sat down to rest for a spell; "I'm going to drive her straight through." Chilled, weary and dead-beat generally, I was in a state of mind that would have welcomed jumping into the rapid with a stone tied to my neck rather than go back to the half-submerged wading and lifting. Roos said he hated to risk his camera, and so would try to crawl with it over the cliff and rejoin us below the rapid. Andy said he was quite game to pull his oar for a run if we had to, but that he would first like to try lining down the opposite bank. He thought we could make it _there_, and he had just a bit of a doubt about what might happen in mid-river. That was reasonable enough, and Blackmore readily consented to try the other side.
[Illustration: OUR WETTEST CAMP AT KINBASKET LAKE (_above_)]
[Illustration: THE OLD FERRY TOWER ABOVE CANOE RIVER (_below_)]
[Illustration: WHERE WE TIED UP AT KINBASKET LAKE (_above_)]
[Illustration: THE BRIDGE WHICH THE COLUMBIA CARRIED A HUNDRED MILES AND PLACED ACROSS ANOTHER STREAM (_center_)]
[Illustration: LINING DOWN TO THE HEAD OF DEATH RAPIDS (_below_)]
Almost at once it appeared that we had landed in the same trouble as on the right bank. Directly off the mouth of the stream that came down from the slide the bow of the boat was caught and held between two submerged rocks, defying our every attempt to lift it over. Blackmore was becoming impatient again, and was just ready to give up and run, when Andy, with the aid of a young tree-trunk used as a lever, rolled one of the boulders aside and cleared the way. Five minutes later we had completed lining down and were pushing off for the final run to the Ferry. No more "mystery rapids" cropped up to disturb our voyage, and, pulling in deep, swift water, we made the next five miles in twenty-five minutes. A part of the distance was through the rocky-walled Red Canyon, one of the grandest scenic bits of the Bend. At one point Blackmore showed us a sheer-sided rock island, on which he said he had once found the graves of two white men, with an inscription so worn as to be indecipherable. He thought they were probably those of miners lost during the Cariboo gold-field excitement of the middle of the last century, or perhaps even those of Hudson Bay _voyageurs_ of a century or more back. There were many unidentified graves all the way round the Bend, he said.