Progression by such means is unavoidably slow; but no steamboat-race on our Western rivers, blind and reckless, boiler-defying and life-despising, ever produced more excitement than this same poling.

Wait till the current runs rapidly, fretting and seething in its angry haste, when for a moment’s delay the boat must lose ground; when the poles are plunged into the rocky bed like harpoons into the back of an escaping whale; when the athletic forms of the men are bent forward until each prostrates himself in the exertion of his full powers; when not a false step—­each step a run—­can be hazarded; when that monotonous unanimity of labor is at its height, in which each boatman becomes possessed as if by a devil of strife; when their faces lose every gentle semblance of humanity, and become distorted to a simple expression of stubborn brute force; when the muscles of their arms are knitted, rope-like, and every nerve stretched to its utmost;—­wait till you have seen all this, and you will confess that a woman’s lazy life can know no harder toil than that of the mind’s sympathetic coexertion,—­that is, if she be excitable or impressible.

The stream is tortuous, erratic, shallow, and narrow.  Sometimes, as we glide, always noiselessly, beneath the overhanging foliage and tangled vines along shore, what myriads of gayly winged insects—­brilliant dragon-flies, mammoth gnats, preposterous mosquitoes—­swarm about our heads, disturbed from their gambols by the laughter and songs aboard our moving craft!

Only one halt in our journey, and that to dine.  Just above this point we pass the swiftest rapids on the route, where the river widens, and each side of the bank is beautiful in its wooded picturesqueness, while the waters rush, in foaming, surging, tumbling confusion, over the rugged rocks, or dart between them like a merry band of water-sprites chasing each other in gleesome frolic.

It seems a desecration of these rapids thus to subdue and triumph over them.  They are as if placed there by Nature as a sportive check to man’s further intrusion; and as the waters come hurrying down, led, as it were, by some Undine jealous for her realm, their murmurings seem to say, in playful, yet earnest remonstrance,—­“Let our gambols divert you; we will hasten to you; but approach no nearer!  Permit us to guard the sanctuary of our hidden sources, our beloved and holy solitudes!”

But vain appeal!  Our men pole frantically onward, and so the day passes.  By mid-afternoon their labors cease, and we come to anchor at the bank, having achieved seventeen miles in nine hours!  Let those of us to whom lightning-express-trains have been slow grumble hereafter at their fifty miles an hour!

A country-wagon receives most of the ladies; the majority of their attendant cavaliers walk; of two horses, the side-saddled one has about one hundred pounds avoirdupois for his share, and, in spite of the lack of habit and equestrian “pomp and circumstance” generally, I cannot term it the most unpleasant three miles I ever travelled.  The road is a wild, rugged ascent up a well-wooded hill-side.  There is a tonic vigor in the atmosphere, which communicates itself irresistibly to one’s mental state; the gladdened lungs inhale it eagerly, as a luxury.  When one walks in this air, one seems to gain wings; to ride is to float at will.