THE THRESHOLD OF THE GODS. 83 
By short flights this bird kept a certain distance 
ahead of us, alighting now on a projecting 
stone of the cliff on one hand, and now ona 
reaching maple bough on the other, eyeing us 
warily as we approached and always laughing 
as it spread its gay pinions to float, rather 
than fly, down the steady little wind which 
drew along with the stream’s course. We left 
all the other birds behind us. The herons 
and bitterns, describing the arc of a circle to 
avoid us, invariably turned up the stream in 
their flight, and the little sandpipers and shad- 
owy looking waders of smaller kinds merely 
flitted from side to side of the water. 
Sitting with my back to the guide and 
watching the halcyon’s manceuvres, I began in 
an idle way to generate a fantastic theory con- 
necting its flight with our own by a thread of 
fatalistic destiny. He, the beautiful, happy 
bird, was on the wind current; we on the 
water-stream. We were in a frail rotten 
canoe; he on his own splendid wings. How 
delightfully easy for him to evade death or 
even danger, whilst we, despite all exertions to 
the contrary, might soon speed right down to 
destruction! An underlying stone too near 
the surface could crush our craft into shreds. 
This bird of the hard, metallic laugh might be 
the demon of the stream leading us on to the 
rapids, to shout and scream and jeer when we 
were dashed to pieces in the cajfion. 
I noted now, by a glance, that our velocity 
was gradually increasing, and that we were 
following the sinuations of a sort of central 
current, which flowed among great bowlders 
and angular fragments of granite. The guide 
used the paddle merely as a rudder, and the 
