96 A NEW SOUND IN THE FOREST. 



lay in its course. Beyond us, through an opening in the 

 trees, we could see the lake, sparkling and shining in the 

 evening sunbeams, and we were talking about the beauty 

 of the view, and the calmness and repose that seemed rest- 

 ing upon all things, when, of a sudden, there came up from 

 that shadowy dell a sound, the most unearthly that ever 

 broke upon the astonished ear of mortal man. I have heard 

 the roar of the lion of the desert, the yell of the hyena, 

 the trumpeting of the elephant, the scream of the panther, 

 the howl of the wolf. It was like none of these ; but if you 

 could imagine them all combined, and concentrated into a 

 single sound, and ushered together upon the air from a sin- 

 gle throat, shaped like the long neck of some gigantic ich- 

 thiosaurns of the times of old, you would have some faint 

 idea of the strange sounds that came roaring up from that 

 hollow way. My friend was a man of courage, and, like 

 myself, had been around the world some; had spent a good 

 deal of time, first and last, in the woods, was familiar with 

 most of the legitimate forest sounds, and had heard all the 

 ten thousand voices that belong in the wilderness, but we 

 had never before listened to a noise like that. 



" We looked to our rifles and at one another, and it may 

 well be that our hats sat somewhat loosely upon our heads, 

 from an involuntary rising of the hair. 'What, in the 

 name of all that is mysterious/ cried my friend, in amaze- 

 ment, ' is that ?' ' It is more than I know/ I replied, as I 

 placed a fresh cap on my rifle. After a few minutes, the 



