"
On the third day, we went through the Flathead River canon. We had
looked forward to this, both because of its beauty and its danger.
Bitterly complaining, the junior members of the family were exiled to
the trail with the exception of the Big Boy.
It had been Joe's plan to photograph the boat with the moving-picture
camera as we came down the canon. He meant, I am sure, to be on hand if
anything exciting happened. But impenetrable wilderness separated the
trail from the edge of the gorge, and that evening we reached the camp
unphotographed, unrecorded, to find Joe sulking in a corner and inclined
to blame the forest on us.
In one of the very greatest stretches of the rapids, a long
straightaway, we saw a pigmy figure, far ahead, hailing us from the
bank. "Pigmy" is a word I use generally with much caution, since a
friend of mine, in the excitement of a first baby, once published a poem
entitled "My Pigmy Counterpart," which a type-setter made, in the
magazine version, "My Pig, My Counterpart."
Nevertheless, we will use it here. Behind this pigmy figure stretched a
cliff, more than one hundred feet in height, of sheer rock overgrown
with bushes.
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