est, and could hardly tell whether it was far away or
near.

There is a perspective of sound as well as of sight, and one must have
some idea of the size of a noise before one can judge of its distance.
A mosquito's horn in a dark room may seem like a trumpet on the
battlements; and the tumult of a mighty stream heard through an unknown
stretch of woods may appear like the babble of a mountain brook close at
hand.

But when we came out upon the bald forehead of a burnt cliff and looked
down, we realised the grandeur and beauty of the unseen voice that we
had been following. A river of splendid strength went leaping through
the chasm five hundred feet below us, and at the foot of two snow-white
falls, in an oval of dark topaz water, traced with curves of floating
foam, lay the solitary island.

The broken path was like a ladder. "How shall we ever get down?" sighed
Greygown, as we dropped from rock to rock; and at the bottom she looked
up sighing, "I know we never can get back again." There was not a foot
of ground on the shores level enough for a tent. Our canoe ferried us
over, two at a time, to the island. It was about a hundred paces long,
composed of round, coggly stones, with just one patch of smooth sand
at the lower end. There was not a tree left upon it larger than an
alder-bush. The tent-poles must be cut far up on the mountain-sides, and
every bough for our beds must be carried down the ladder of rocks. But
the men were gay at their work, singing like mocking-birds. After all,
the glow of life comes from friction with its difficulties. If we cannot
find them at home, we sally abroad and create them, just to warm up our
mettle.

The ouananiche in the island pool were superb, astonishing, incredible.
We stood on the cobble-stones at the upper end, and cast our little
flies across the sweeping stream, and for three days the fish came
crowding in to fill the barrel of pickled salmon for our guides' winter
use; and the score rose,--twelve, twenty-one, thirty-two; and the size
of the "biggest fish" steadily mounted--four pounds, four and a half,
five, five and three-quarters. "Precisely almost six pounds," said
Ferdinand, holding the scales; "but we may call him six, M'sieu', for
if it had been to-morrow that we had caught him, he would certainly have
gained the other ounce." And yet, why should I repeat the fisherman's
folly of writing down the record of that marvellous catch? We always
do it, but we know that