100
In the next 18 miles the river leaves the plain and enters the mountain gorge which terminates in Camoyi Gotan (or Cotan). Entering the gorge the stream increases in rapidity, and after traversing a distance of about four miles canoes are turned into a still pool situated above a fall about 412 feet high, here the canoes are unloaded and the ladings have to be carried a distance of 4 or 412 miles down the gorge to Camoyi Cotan (abode of the gods).
The path is wild and rugged, it is on the left bank of the river which foams amongst the rocks below. The canoes, now empty, are well manned and, after an offering to the river god they proceed to shoot the fall and then a wild and continuous rapid.
The distance, about 4 miles, is done in a few minutes and the canoes float on the still waters of gloomy Camoyi Cotan. The walls of rock and large boulders in the gorge are polished like marble, there is much serpentine, green stone, and schistose rock; above towers the oak ash, walnut, and todo, also the graceful silver birch and the maple.
The drift-wood in the gorge shewed that the spring floods reach a height of 27 or 30 feet.
Camoyi Cotan is a deep and sombre pool whose surface is only broken by eddies and swirls suggestive of a deep and rugged bottom. Walls of rock hem it in and these are of weird and fantastic form. The strata are in some places thrown up into a vertical position, in others they are wavy. Proceeding to the end of the pool the channel turns sharp to the right and, after descending two or three small rapids at 50 miles from Camoyi Cotan the river reaches the great Satspora plain and from thence it is navigable, by vessels of light draught, to the sea, distant about 100 miles (by water). At this point the Ishi-kari, much increased in volume, becomes a broad and placid stream which slowly meanders a very serpentine course, through the rich alluvium of the plain: many tributaries add their waters to it until at the mouth of the Shinoro river and 1212 miles from the sea, the Ishi-kari has attained a width of 250 yards and a depth of five fathoms, here the current does not exceed 212 miles per hour.
