The Pacific tourist:

223
can not give the reader a better idea of a flume
ride than to compare it to riding down an old
fashioned eave-trough at an angle of 45~, hanging in midair without support of roof or house,
and thus shot a distance of 15 miles.
At the start, we went at the rate of about 20
miles an hour, which is a little less than the average speed of a railroad train. The reader can
have no idea of the speed we made, until lihe
compares it to a railroad. The average time we
made was 30 miles per hour-a mile in two minutes for the entire distance. This is greater
than the average running time of railroads.
Incidents of the tlide.-The red-faced carpenter sat in front of our boat on the bottom, as
best he could. Mr. Fair sat on a seat behind
him, and I sat behind Mr. Fair in the stern, and
was of great service to him in keeping the water,
which broke over the end-board, from his back.
There was a great deal of water also shipped
in the bows of the hog-trough, and I know Mr.
Fair's broad shoulders kept me from many a
wetting in that memorable trip.
At the heaviest grade the water came in so
furiously in front, that it was impossible to see
where we were going, or what was ahead of us;
but, when the grade was light, and we were going at a three or four-minute pace, the vision was
very delightful, although it was terrible.
In this ride, which fails me to describe, I was
perched up in a boat no wider than a chair, sometimes 20 feet high in the air, and with the
ever varying altitude of the flume, often 70
feet high. When the water would enable me to
look ahead, I would see this trestle here and
there for miles, so small and narrow, and apparently so fragile, that I could only compare it to
a chalk-mark, upon which, high ill the air, I was
running at a rate unknown upon railroads.
One circumstance during the trip did more to
show me the terrible rapidity with which we
dashed through the flume, than anything else.
We had been rushing down at a pretty lively
rate of speed, when the boat suddenly struck
something in the bow-a nail, or lodged stick of
wood, which ought not to have been there. What
was the result? The red-faced carpenter was
sent whirling into the flume, 10 feet ahead.
Fair was precipitated on his face, and I found a
soft lodgment on Fair's back.
It seemed to me that in a second's time, Fair,
himself a powerful man, had the carpenter by
the scruff of the neck, and had pulled him into h
the boat. I did not know that, at this time,
Fair had his fingers crushed between the boat
and the flume.
But we sped along; minutes seemed hours. It
seemed an hour before we arrived at the worst
place in the flume, and yet Hereford tells me it
was less than 10 minutes. The flume at the point
alluded to must have very near 45~ inclination.
In looking out before we reached it, I thought
)
the only w ay to get to the bottom was to fall.
How our boat kept in the k e track is more than I
know. The wind, the steamboat, the railroad
never went so fast. I have been where the wind
blew at the rate of 80 miles an hour, and yet my
breath was not taken away. In the flume, in the
bad places, it seemed as if I would suffocate.
The first bad place that we reached, and if I
remember right, it was the worst, I got close
again st Fair. I did not k now that I would survive the journey, but I wanted to see how fast
we were going. So I lay close to him and placed
my head between his s houlders. The w ater was
coming into his face, like the breakers of the
ocean. When we went slow, the breakers came
in on my back, but when the heavy grades were
reached, the breakers were in front. In one case
Fair shielded me, and in the other, I shielded
Fair.
In this particularly bad place I allude to, my desire was to form some judgment of the speed we
were making. If the truth must be spoken, I
was really scared almost out of reason; but if I
was on the way to eternity, I wanted to know
exactly how fast I went; so I huddled close to
Fair, and turned my eyes toward the hills.
Every object I placed my eye on was gone, before I could clearly see what it was. Mountains
passed like visions and shadows. It was with
difficulty that I could get my breath. I felt that
I did not weigh an hundred pounds, although
I knew, in the sharpness of intellect which one
has at such a moment, that the scales turned at
two hundred.
Mr. Flood and Mr. Hereford, although they
started several minutes later than we, were close
upon us. They were not so heavily loaded, and
they had the full sweep of the water, while we
had it rather at second hand. Their boat
finally struck ours with a terrible crash.
Mr. Flood was thrown upon his face, and the
waters flowed over him, leaving not a dry thread
upon him. What became of Hereford I do not
know, except that when he reached the terminus
of the flume, he was as wet as any of us.
This only remains to be said. We made the
entire distance in less time than a railroad train
would ordinarily make, and a portion of the
time we went faster than a railroad train ever
went.
Fair said we went at least a mile a minute.
Flood said we went at the rate of 100 miles an
hour, and my deliberate belief is that we went
at a rate that annihilated time and space. We
were a wet lot when we reached the terminus of
the flume. Flood said he would not make the
trip again, for the whole Consolidated Virginia
Mine.
Fair said that he should never again place himself on an equality with timber and wood, and
Hereford said he was sorry that he ever built the
flume. As for myself, I told the millionaire that
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