At
some such places the stream was engaged at undermining the banks which
rose eight and ten feet above the water. Occasional sections,
containing tons of earth and covered with tall, slender willow trees,
would topple over, falling on the water with the roar of a cannon or a
continued salute of cannons; for the falling, once started, quite
often extended for half a mile down the stream. At one such place
eighteen trees fell in three minutes, and it would be safe to say that
a hundred trees were included in the extended fall. The trees, sixty
feet high, resembled a field of gigantic grass or unripened grain; the
river was a reaper, cutting it away at the roots. Over they tumbled to
be buried in the stream; the water would swirl and boil, earth and
trees would disappear; then the mass of leaf-covered timber, freed of
the earth, would wash away to lodge on the first sand-bar, and the
formation of a new island or a new shore would begin.
Then again, the banks were barren, composed of gravel and clay,
centuries older than the verdure-covered land, undisturbed, possibly,
since some glacial period deposited it there. But a shifting of the
channel directed the attack against these banks. Here the swift
current would find a little irregularity on the surface and would
begin its cutting. The sand-laden water bored exactly like an auger,
in fast-cutting whirls. One such place I watched for a half-hour from
the very beginning, until the undermined section, fourteen feet high,
began to topple, and I pulled out to safety, but not far enough to
escape a ducking in the resulting wave.
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