222 I GO A- FISHING. 



of illustration by pictures ; and while I was cantering 

 away on this, Dupont went wading and climbing, climb- 

 ing and wading down stream, and when I came to my 

 senses I had lost him, or he had lost me, which is much 

 the same. He had actually passed me without seeing me 

 or being seen, and I thought he must still be up stream. 

 In fishing such water, anglers should keep near each 

 other. An accident may well happen ; and a broken limb 

 or a sprained ankle would be a serious business to one 

 alone in that gorge, whence in such case he could only 

 get out by sending for stout assistance. I sat a half- 

 hour, then went a few rods down, and fortunately found 

 Dupont's foot-print still wet on a flat rock. Then I pushed 

 on, and a hundred yards below saw him sitting, where he 

 had been waiting a half-hour for me. He had reached 

 the Ultima Thule of that day's sport, and as I was not 

 there he knew he must have passed me. 



Below us the stream plunged down the heaviest cata- 

 ract in the gorge, and the rocks rose perpendicular a hun- 

 dred feet on each side. The first time we went down 

 there we were an hour in getting out. Back we could not 

 go, for the last few rods had been by leaps downward from 

 rock to rock, which we could not climb to return. At last 

 we discovered a way out, and we have used it often since. 

 Climbing a singular mass of rocks, covered with brush 

 and, on its top, with some large trees, we found the trunk 

 of a fallen tree reaching over a chasm some thirty feet 

 deep and full twenty wide. The branches were nearly 

 all gone, such as remained only serving to bother our feet 

 as we walked across it, and then dug our finger-nails in 

 the roughnesses of a sloping face of granite which came 

 down from bushes fifty feet or so above. Up this we 

 crawled on hands and knees, in fact flat on our faces once 



