Gaut Gurley; Or, the Trappers of Umbagog: A Tale of Border LifeThompson, Daniel P. (Daniel Pierce)
General
Gaut Gurley; Or, the Trappers of Umbagog: A Tale of Border Life
Thompson, Daniel P. (Daniel Pierce)
Frontier and pioneer life -- Fiction; Maine -- Fiction; Trappers -- Fiction
Claud implicitly obeyed the directions of the hunter, without much faith,
however, in the success of his bold attempt. But he soon perceived he had
underrated the skill and strength of arm which had been relied on to
accomplish the seemingly impossible feat. Standing upright and slightly
bracing in the bottom of his canoe, the hunter first marked out with his
eye his course through a given reach of the rock-broken and foaming waters
above; then, nicely calculating the resisting force of each rapid to be
overcome, and the required impetus, and the direction to be given to his
canoe to effect it, he sharply bid Claud be on his guard, and sent the
light craft like an arrow into the boiling eddies before him. And now, by
sudden and powerful shoves, he was seen shooting obliquely up one rapid;
tacking with the quickness of light, and darting off zigzag among the rocks
and eddies towards another, which was in turn surmounted; while the boat
was forced, surging and bounding forward, with increasing impetus, now up
and now athwart the rushing currents, till he had gained a resting-place in
the still water of some sheltering boulder in the stream, when he would
mark off, with a rapid glance, another reach of falls, and shoot in among
them as before. Thus, with the quick tacks and turns and sudden leaps of
the ascending salmon, and almost with the celerity, he made his way up the
long succession of rapids, until the last of the series was overcome, and
he found himself safely emerging into the smooth waters of the beautiful
lakelet or pond which divides, in the upper portion of its course, this
remarkable stream. Another row of a mile or so now brought the voyagers
where the water again took the form of a swift river, tumbling and foaming
over the rocks, in the last series of rapids to be overcome. These also
were surmounted in the same manner and with the same success as the former.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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