ly had not heard them, so deafening
was the noise which filled his brain, and seemed to make the very leaves
upon the bushes quiver, and the solid stone beneath his feet to reel and
ring. For two hundred yards and more above the fall nothing met his eye
but one white waste of raging foam, with here and there a transverse
dyke of rock, which hurled columns of spray and surges of beaded water
high into the air,--strangely contrasting with the still and silent
cliffs of green leaves which walled the river right and left, and more
strangely still with the knots of enormous palms upon the islets, which
reared their polished shafts a hundred feet into the air, straight and
upright as masts, while their broad plumes and golden-clustered fruit
slept in the sunshine far aloft, the image of the stateliest repose amid
the wildest wrath of Nature.

He looked round anxiously for the expected Indian; but he was nowhere to
be seen; and, in the meanwhile, as he stept cautiously along the island,
which was some fifty yards in length and breadth, his senses, accustomed
as they were to such sights, could not help dwelling on the exquisite
beauty of the scene; on the garden of gay flowers, of every imaginable
form and hue, which fringed every boulder at his feet, peeping out amid
delicate fern-fans and luxuriant cushions of moss; on the chequered
shade of the palms, and the cool air, which wafted down from the
cataracts above the scents of a thousand flowers. Gradually his ear
became accustomed to the roar, and, above its mighty undertone, he could
hear the whisper of the wind among the shrubs, and the hum of myriad
insects; while the rock manakin, with its saffron plumage, flitted
before him from stone to stone, calling cheerily, and seeming to lead
him on. Suddenly, scrambling over the rocky flower-beds to the other
side of the isle, he came upon a little shady beach, which, beneath a
bank of stone some six feet high, fringed the edge of a perfectly still
and glassy bay. Ten yards farther, the cataract fell sheer in thunder:
but a high fern-fringed rock turned its force away from that quiet nook.
In it the water swung slowly round and round in glassy dark-green rings,
among which dimpled a hundred gaudy fish, waiting for every fly and worm
which spun and quivered on the eddy. Here, if anywhere, was the place to
find the owner of the canoe. He leapt down upon the pebbles; and as he
did so, a figure rose from behind a neighboring rock, and