380 THE MOUNTAIN. 



the fresh water, it grows in the sea ; during winter takes 

 refuge in the ocean; it passes the summer in rivers, and 

 ascends to their sources. It traverses with facility the whole 

 extent of the longest rivers." 



"As soon as a river is freed of ice, the salmon enter it, 

 and always seem by nature impelled to enter those streams 

 in which they were born ; an invisible power traces the 

 route they are to follow, brings them back exactly to the 

 place of their birth, and all of them, reassembled without 

 tumult, appear to follow its guidance with implicit respect, 

 just as we see the swallows every spring return to the nest 

 of the preceding year." The season of fresh-water festivi- 

 ties passed, the pilgrimage to the original shrine of love, 

 and the scenes of youth, rock, waterfall and tree, performed, 

 the enchantment of his birth-place in the far-off hill and 

 mountain river-bed realized, the summer ended, this great 

 fish, attenuated and exhausted, quietly returns for a season 

 of repose to the caverns of the sea. So his smaller brother of 

 the distant rivulet, the brook-trout, born in the dance and roar 

 of the rocky torrent, or in the play over pebbly bed of rush- 

 ing spring-flows, has still an inextinguishable longing to 

 go to the sea again, and will go when he can, forming 

 new characters and affinities, almost to the loss of his 

 identity. Mighty sounding Sea ! Venerable Mother of life ! 

 ancient abyss of organic mucus ! thou wrappest the world 

 as a mantle ; " an ever-fluctuating, ever self-elevating, ever 

 self - depressing organism," like the infinite Brahma, thou 

 givest life forever, but will not be defrauded ; thy children 

 still long to go to thee, still pray to be absorbed again, and 

 the trout of the mountain-top, whose home is made by the 

 droppings of the cloud, and the wandering salmon of the 



deep, 



" The seeds of land and sea 

 Are atoms of thy body bright, 

 And thy behest obey." 



