The Deschutes is a river of many rôles: it roars and rushes in white-watered cascades, it sparkles gently in a myriad rippling rapids, it is sedate as a mill pond; sometimes its banks are fields flanked with flowers, sometimes steep slopes with black pools below and great trees above, sometimes lined with alders or with the needle-carpeted forest marching out to the very water's edge. Such it is for the first hundred miles. Below, leaving the land of trees and meadows, it plunges for a second century of miles through a spectacular canyon, walled in by cliffs and abrupt hillsides, often rising almost sheer a thousand feet. "The Grand Canyon of the Northwest," those who know it call this stretch of the Deschutes. Above, billowing back from the rim, is a great golden-brown land of wheat fields, with a marvelous mountain westerly skyline. On the river's western flank, between it and the Cascade Range, is a playland of beautiful pine timber, crystal lakes, and mountained meadows, bounded on one hand by snow-capped peaks and on the other by the broad plains that sweep eastward to Idaho. One August we foregathered in this happy hunting ground with our canoe and our grub, near the headwaters of the Deschutes, in the heart of a region of sunshine, mountain prairie, glorious trees, and laughing water. One hundred miles of liquid highway lay before us, and we envied no one. Crane Prairie is a broad mountain meadow, hemmed in by timbered foothills that climb to the snow mountains, glimpsed here and there from the prairie land. The Deschutes divides into three streams, each meandering down from little lakes tucked away in the timber at the base of the snow slopes that feed them. All around the prairie is a delightful region intersected by trails, dotted with lakes and meadows; altogether a pleasant place for ramblings, either on foot or horseback, with fishing, hunting, and mountain climbing as tangible objectives. The first stage of our outing was a stationary one, so far as the canoe was concerned, for a week was devoted to expeditioning here and there upon and around Crane Prairie. There was excellent fishing, and we saw just enough of the trails and the mountains to realize something of their possibilities. Then one morning, before the sunlight had filtered over the hills and down through the pine boughs, we launched the _Long Green_, our canoe which had made the transcontinental trip from Oldtown, Maine, and started it upon a more venturesome, if less lengthy trip. Ours, by the way, was an equal suffrage outing. Its feminine better-half paddled as strenuously, cast a fly as optimistically, and "flipped" hot cakes as diligently as did the male member. Altogether, she demonstrated beyond a doubt that the enjoyment of an Oregon canoe trip need not depend upon one's sex or previous condition of servitude. [Illustration: Canoeing and duck shooting may be combined on the Deschutes] [Illustration: On a backwater of the Deschutes]