Now and again the river was bordered by nature-made fields, knee-deep with flowers; there were purple lupin everywhere and vermilion Indian paint-brush, and a score of other gay blossoms. Often for the pleasure of tramping through this pretty outdoor garden, we would let the canoe follow its own sweet will at the end of a rope, while we walked down the bank, perhaps intimately investigating the households of beavers or casting a royal coachman along the shadowed water close beside the edge. The special delight of camping, as anyone knows who has tried it, is that life all at once becomes so simple away from the high-pressure world of telephones, time-tables, dinner engagements, and other necessary evils. That is the essence of outing pleasure. The fishing, the canoeing, the hunting, climbing, or what-not are really relegated to obscurity in comparison with this one great boon. When our physical system runs down, we take medicine; when our mental system gets out of gear, we crave a dose of the open, which means of simplicity. A canoe trip is simplicity personified. In the first place, you are launched into the wide world of out-of-doors with your entire household, from dining table to bed, concentrated in a couple of bundles that repose amidships in the craft which is the beginning and the end of your transportation possibilities. The rest is "up to you." If you would get somewhere, it is necessary to paddle, always exercising due diligence to keep the craft right side up and escape fatal collisions with vexatious rocks and snags. In that department--locomotion--there is just enough active responsibility to keep it thoroughly worth while, and more than enough relaxation, as the current carries the canoe along with only now and then a guiding dip of the paddle, to make it all a most pleasurable loaf. Every stopping place was a new experience, and, it should be said, each seemed even more beautiful than its predecessor. "There's a bully place. See--there under the big pine." [Illustration: Along the Deschutes, the "River of Falls." "It roars and rushes, in white-watered Cascades" Copyright 1911 by Kiser Photo Co., Portland, Ore.] With a stroke or two of the paddles the _Long Green_ arrived gently at the bank beneath that pine, and out would come the box of grub, the gunny sack of pots and frying pans, and the rolls of bedding. Then the canoe was drawn from the water, and, inverted, pressed into double service as a table and a rain shelter, in case of need. Our waterproof sleeping-bags were supposed to do as much for us, and on two occasions showers dampened our slumbers, if not our spirits. The important work of camping, which is not work at all, but play, is in the commissary department. It has four stages: lighting the fire, cooking, eating, and cleaning up; the third is, by all odds, the most popular.