live fish whole.
This the ravenous bird would sometimes try to do, even though the ring
was put around his neck for the express purpose of preventing him from
gulping down a whole fish at once.

It was springtime, and the buds were just bursting into flower. The river
was full of fish, especially of carp, ascending to the great rapids or
cascades. Here the current ran at a prodigious rate of swiftness, and the
waters rippled and boiled and roared with frightful noise. Yet, strange
to say, many of the fish were swimming up the stream as if their lives
depended on it. They leaped and floundered about; but every one seemed to
be tossed back and left exhausted in the river, where they panted and
gasped for breath in the eddies at the side. Some were so bruised
against the rocks that, after a few spasms, they floated white and stiff,
belly up, on the water, dead, and were swept down the stream. Still the
shoal leaped and strained every fin, until their scales flashed in the
sun like a host of armored warriors in battle. Gojiro, enjoying it as if
it were a real conflict of wave and fishes, clapped his hands with
delight.

Then Gojiro inquired, by means of writing, of an old white-bearded sage
standing by and looking on: "What is the name of this part of the river?"

"We call it Lung Men," said the sage.

"Will you please write the characters for it," said Gojiro, producing his
ink-case and brush-pen, with a roll of soft mulberry paper.

The sage wrote the two Chinese characters, meaning "The Gate of the
Dragons," or "Dragons' Gate," and turned away to watch a carp that
seemed almost up into smooth water.

"Oh! I see," said Gojiro to himself. "That's pronounced Riu Mon in
Japanese. I'll go further on and see. There must be some meaning in this
fish-climbing." He went forward a few rods, to where the banks trended
upward into high bluffs, crowned by towering firs, through the top
branches of which fleecy white clouds sailed slowly along, so near the
sky did the tree-tops seem. Down under the cliffs the river ran perfectly
smooth, almost like a mirror, and broadened out to the opposite shore.
Far back, along the current, he could still see the rapids shelving down.
It was crowded at the bottom with leaping fish, whose numbers gradually
thinned out toward the center; while near the top, close to the edge of
level water, one solitary fish, of powerful fin and tail, breasted the
steep stream. Now forward a leap, then a slide