9) BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES. 
more than the mere modicum contained in the 
anticipation of pleasurable sensations, has 
entered, or crises of the imagination based 
wholly on phantasmal exigencies. I reach 
back the powers of my memory now, and they 
fetch up out of the past, even to the minutest 
detail, the whole of that little period of time 
during which I waited, with bated breath and 
condensed expectancy, to see a god! 
The river was bearing us on at a rate of 
speed which, but for the silent evenness of the 
motion, would have been frightful under better 
circumstances. But the wood of which the 
pirogue was made—it must have been yellow 
tulip—seemed so unsound and semi-disinte- 
erated that the wonder was it did not dissolve 
into a flake of vegetable mould upon the water, 
and thus let us sink! 
A vast white bird, probably a snowy heron 
the Garzetta candidissima of our naturalists, 
swept majestically across from side to side of 
the river, directly over the mysterious shining 
line and just hitherward of the pale mist, 
quickly losing itself among the trees. Again 
I saw, or imagined, shadowy forms stealing 
through rifts in the flower-sprent glooms of the 
woods. But they were less satisfactory than 
the dimmest forms of a dream. I could not 
follow them a second of time. 
A broad booming heralded our approach to 
the cataract. We felt no motion, so steady 
was our sweep, and yet we were leaving the 
dreamy wind behind us. Halcyon, with erect 
and dishevelled crest, led on in an ecstasy of 
chirp and flutter. I became aware, through 
some slight, ominously decisive movement of 
the guide, that he was preparing for a supreme 
