354 



The Story 

 ofKopseep 



given him was for a new life, and at the 

 word Kopseep turned tail to the current and 

 went speeding down the river, where he had 

 never been before. He was a smolt now, and 

 all his brothers from the same nest were 

 speeding down the river with him, leaving 

 their sisters, still in their bright parr coats, 

 playing and feeding about the shallows where 

 they were born. 



It was a wonderful journey for our little 

 smolt, — the more so because he had never 

 before ventured away from the home brook, 

 and he knew not why he went nor whither 

 he was going on the long rushing migration. 

 Down, down he hurried, now shooting eas- 

 ily through the dancing riffles, now whirled 

 along the rush and tumble of a boiling rapid, 

 and now caught up with irresistible force 

 and hurled outward into a white chaos where 

 all his universe seemed to be falling blindly 

 into space that roared and trembled beneath 

 him. But always his first instinct to keep 

 close to bottom was with him, and even in 

 the worst of rapids a turn of his tail would 

 send him down to where the water eddied 



