se
understood what it all meant. For many long minutes he watched the
struggle, which showed no sign of ending. Then disgusted and
apprehensive, he forsook the pool, darting beneath the canoe as he did
so, and continued his journey up-stream.

Late in the day the returning traveller came to the mouth of the Big
South Branch. Without hesitation he turned up that turbulent but
shrunken stream, knowing it for his own; and he made no stop till he
reached the deep, green, foamy pool at the foot of the Falls. Being
still comparatively fresh, and very restless, he swam all round the
pool, and took a crafty survey of the terrific obstacle before him. But
among the sojourners in the pool were many fish with bleeding sides, who
had essayed the leap in vain and were waiting to recuperate their
energies for another effort. So he, too, paused a little, gathering his
young strength.

[Illustration: "VANQUISHED IN THEIR OWN ELEMENT BY THE MINK."]

The Falls of the Big South were about twelve feet in total height. There
were two leaps, the upper one, of about three feet, rolling down into a
hollow shelf of sandstone some six or eight feet in width, and the
lower, dropping nine feet sheer into the pool. Most of the face of
fall, at this stage of the water, was lashed into foam by fissures and
projecting angles of rock, but on the right the main volume of the
stream fell in a clear, green column. Up the front of this column the
grilse presently flung himself, striking the water about a foot from the
top. As he struck, the impetus of his leap not yet exhausted, his
powerful fins and tail took firm hold of the solid water and urged him
upward. Over the lip he shot, into the boiling turmoil of the shelf,
then onward over the great surge of the upper dip. He had triumphed
easily, and the way was clear before him to the shining gravel bars
whereon he had been spawned. There were still some tough
rapids--shallow, and tortuous, and grid-ironed with slaty rocks--to be
climbed; but there were quiet pools to sojourn in, and no perils that
his craft could not evade. One by one his fellow voyagershad dropped
away, betrayed by the fisherman's luring fly, clutched by the skilful
paw of wildcat or bear, or vanquished in their own element by the mink
or the otter. But when he reached the wide spawning-beds he was still
comraded by a fair remnant of the host which had entered the river with
him; and the shallow run that swept the bars were noisy with