placid river.

In common with the rivers which pour into it, the Ottawa is broken by
many falls and rapids, and to have attempted to run the huge raft over
one of these would have insured its complete destruction. But this
difficulty is duly provided for. At one side of the fall a "slide" is
built--that is, a contrivance something like a canal, with sides and
bottom of heavy timber, and having a steep slope down which the water
rushes in frantic haste to the level below. Now the raft is not put
together in one piece, but is made up of a number of "cribs"--a crib
being a small raft containing fifteen to twenty timbers, and being about
twenty-four feet wide by thirty feet in length. At the head of the slide
the big raft is separated into the cribs, and these cribs make the
descent one at a time, each having three or four men on board.

Shooting the slides, as it is called, is a most delightful amusement to
people whose nerves don't bother them. Frank had heard so much about it
that he was looking forward to it from the time he boarded the raft, and
now at Des Joachim Falls he was to have the realization. He went down in
one of the first cribs, and this is the way he described the experience
to his mother:--

"But, mother, the best fun of the whole thing is shooting the slides. I
just wish there was a slide near Calumet, so that I could take you down
and let you see how splendid it is. Why, it's just like--let me see--I've
got it! It's just like tobogganing on water. You jump on board the crib
at the mouth of the slide, you know, and it moves along very slowly at
first, until it gets to the edge of the first slant; then it takes a
sudden start, and away it goes shooting down like greased lightning,
making the water fly up all around you, just like the snow does when