THE HALCYON IN CANADA 211 



in the air. They all run quickly thitlior and report. 

 If any creature had called in the forest for niiloH 

 about, I should have heard it. At times I could 

 hear the distant roar of water off beyond the outlet 

 of the lake. The sound of the vagrant winds purr- 

 ing here and there in the tops of the spruces reached 

 my ear. A breeze would come slowly down the 

 mountain, then strike the lake, and I could see its 

 footsteps approaching by the changed appearance of 

 the water. How slowly the winds move at times, 

 sauntering like one on a Sunday walk! A breeze 

 always enlivens the fish; a dead calm and all pen- 

 nants sink, your activity with your fly is ill-timed, 

 and you soon take the hint and stop. Becalmed 

 upon my raft, I observed, as I have often done Ix;- 

 fore, that the life of Nature ebbs and flows, comes 

 and departs, in these wilderness scenes ; one moment 

 her stage is thronged and the next quite deserted. 

 Then there is a wonderful unity of movement in the 

 two elements, air and water. When there is much 

 going on in one, there is quite sure to be much 

 going on in the other. You have been casting, per- 

 haps, for an hour with scarcely a jump or any sign 

 of life anywhere about you, when presently tlio 

 breeze freshens and the trout begin to respond, and 

 then of a sudden all the performers rush in : ducks 

 come sweeping by ; loons laugh and wheel overhead, 

 then approach the water on a long, gentle incline, 

 plowing deeper and deeper into its surface, until 

 their momentum is arrested, or converted into foam ; 

 the fish hawk screams; the bald eagle goes flapping 



