and skill as man can throw into the work of hand, eye, and head; knowledge of when to strike and how to do it; knowledge of water and of rock, and of the one hundred combinations which rock and watercan assume—­for these two things, rock and water, taken in the abstract, fail as completely to convey any idea of their fierce embracings in the throes of a rapid as the fire burning quietly in a drawing-room fireplace fails to convey the idea of a house wrapped and sheeted in flames.  Above the rapid all is still and quiet, and one cannot see what is going on below the first rim of the rush, but stray shoots of spray and the deafening roar of descending water tell well enough what is about to happen.  The Indian has got some rock or mark to steer by, and knows well the door by which he is to enter the slope of water.  As the canoe—­never appearing so frail and tiny as when it is about to commence its series of wild leaps and rushes—­nears the rim where the waters disappear from view, the bowsman stands up and, stretching forward his head, peers down the eddying rush’; in a second he is on his knees again; without turning his head he speaks a word or two to those who are behind him; then not quick enough to take in the rushing scene.  There is a rock here and a big green cave of water there; there is a tumultuous rising and sinking and sinking of snow-tipped waves; there are places that are smooth-running for a moment and then yawn and open up into great gurgling chasms the next; there are strange whirls and backward eddies and rocks, rough and smooth and polished—­and through all this the canoe glances like an arrow, dips like a wild bird down the wing of the storm, now slanting from a rock, now edging a green cavern, now breaking through a backward rolling billow, without a word spoken, but with every now and again a quick convulsive twist and turn of the bow-paddle to edge far off some rock, to put her full through some boiling billow, to hold her steady down the slope of some thundering chute which has the power of a thousand horses:  for remember, this river of rapids, this Winnipeg, is no mountain torrent, no brawling brook, but over every rocky ledge and “wave-worn precipice” there rushes twice a vaster volume than Rhine itself pours forth.  The rocks which strew the torrent are frequently the most trifling of the dangers of the descent, formidable though they appear to the stranger.  Sometimes a huge boulder will stand full in the midst of the channel, apparently presenting an obstacle from which escape seems impossible.  The canoe is rushing full towards it, and no power can save it—­there is just one power that can do it, and the rock itself provides it.  Not the skill of man could run the boat bows on to that rock.  There is a wilder sweep of water rushing off the polished sides than on to them, and the instant that we touch that sweep we shoot away with redoubled speed.  No, the rock is not as treacherous as the whirlpool and twisting billow.