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Oregon Digital
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seemed to block the whole channel. From Captain Armstrong's description, this was the exact point where the trouble with his tipsy bow-paddler had occurred, the little difficulty which had been the cause of his leaving the salvaged cask of Scotch...
2004-08-09
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became plain we could have run, and then he all but failed to land above one where a well-masked "souse-hole" would have gulped the boat in one mouthful.
It was at this juncture that I asked him why he had never taken the trouble of making a...
2004-08-09
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was a vicious side-winder, shaped like a letter "S," with overhanging cliffs playing battledore-and-shuttlecock with the river at the bends. Blackmore said he would have lined it if the water had been two feet lower; as it was now we would get...
2004-08-09
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tested Roos, "and I've heard that roar for five minutes myself. Just another rapid, isn't it? The water always . . ."
"Rot!" roared the veteran. "There ain't no fall with a rip-raring thunder like that 'tween Yellow Creek and Death Rapids. Rot, I...
2004-08-09
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ter—provided the boat could be kept to it. Blackmore said that it looked like too much of a risk, and decided to try to line down the right bank—the one on which we had landed. As the river walls were too steep and broken to allow any of the...
2004-08-09
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edly, 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...
2004-08-09
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of "professional jealousy." "Stars" and "Directors" never do hit off.) The rest I would retain and divide with Captain Armstrong as agreed. I did not tell them that I had high hopes that Armstrong would soften in the end and let me keep it all to...
2004-08-10
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CHAPTER VIII
III. RUNNING THE BEND Boat Encampment to Revelstoke WE were now close to the historic Boat Encampment, where at last our course would join with that followed by the early voyageurs and explorers. No point in the whole length of...
2004-08-10
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west, Portage River, flowing to the Columbia ; the other has its outlet to the east, Whirlpool River, a branch of the Athabaska, which joins the Mackenzie and flows to the Arctic Ocean.
"The elevated valley in which these lakes are situated is...
2004-08-10
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mometer at Kinbasket Lake, so I could not take the temperatures here; but Wood River was beyond all doubt the coldest stream I had ever dabbled a fingertip in. What the ascent to Athabaska Pass must have been may be judged from this description by...
2004-08-10
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the voyage. I shall hardly need to add that Thompson's remarkable journey, so far as its original object was concerned, was a failure. He reached the mouth of the Columbia well in advance of Astor's land party, but only to find the New Yorker...
2004-08-10
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of the Selkirks were considerably more extensive than the eastern, the drainage to the Columbia from that side was proportionately greater. Cascades and
cataracts came tumbling in every few hundred yards, and every mile or two, from one side or...
2004-08-10
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hard breaking through the wet underbrush to recover it. The river was still rising from the rains, and the current swift with occasional rapids. Blackmore approached the head of Gordon Rapids (named, of course, from a man of that name who had lost...
2004-08-10
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boughs cut and spread and the tent set up. Finally, we fried bacon, tossed flapjacks and baked bannocks. I could tell by his expression that Roos dearly wanted to lend a Mack Sennett "custard-pie" touch by
having some one smear some one else in...
2004-08-10
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"A little after starting (from the Dalles des Morts) we backed our paddles and stood still for some minutes admiring a striking curiosity. The water of a cataract creek, after shooting over the brink of a bold precipice, falls in a white sheet...
2004-08-10
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usage had opened a slit at the knee. Possibly I caught this somewhere on the boat without noting it in my excitement; or it is even possible the current did tear it off. There was nothing especially
remarkable about it in any case. All the same,...
2004-08-10
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sore and swollen state of their feet, their daily progress did not exceed two or three miles. A tailor named Holmes was the next to die, and the others subsisted for some days on his emaciated remains. In a little while, of the seven men, only two...
2004-08-10
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lined below the rollers, but not without reiterating the old warning about not dipping too deep, and being quick about throwing the oar free from its oar-lock if a whirlpool started to drag down the blade. We had a lively five minutes of it, what...
2004-08-10
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and I have an idea that we managed to keep a considerable way even over the speeding current right to the finish. It was quite the wettest river run I ever made. A number of times during the war I was in a destroyer when something turned up to...
2004-08-10
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of much less character. As "Bill" was much given to periodic sprees, Andy was satisfied that "Tommy," who was a great sizer - up of personality, had left him in disgust and returned to his former deserted home to shift for himself. As he would...
2004-08-10
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them. I spent the night on the couch, and without a net.
According to the best of my judgment, that story of mine was the only true one told that night. And yet — confound them — they wouldn't believe it — any more than I would theirs !...
2004-08-10
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quences of a kindly thought I had when he came down to the boat to see us off.
" `Bill,' " I said, as he started to wring our hands in parting, "they tell me you've become a comparative teetotaler these last few years. But we have a little...
2004-08-10
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was still trying to enumerate "Tommy." Very likely by that time there were two of him in fancy as well as in fact — possibly mauve and pink ones.
Blackmore took a last whiff at the neck of the rum bottle and then tossed it gloomily into the...
2004-08-10
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their penchant for dramatizing the perils of the Big Bend, the people are delightful. It is true that the hospitable spirit of one Goldenite did get me in rather bad; but perhaps the fault was more mine than his. Meeting him on the railway...
2004-08-09
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Image caption: ANDY AND I PULLING DOWN KINBASKET LAKE --page break-- myself) bent my shivering pole down to the water. When Roos had enough footage of "fighting," I brought my catch in close to the boat and leered down at him, registering "near...
2004-08-10
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