THE THRESHOLD OF THE GODS. 83 



By short flights this bird kept a certain distance 

 ahead of us, alighting now on a projecting 

 stone of the cliff on one hand, and now on a 

 reaching maple bough on the other, eyeing us 

 warily as we approached and always laughing 

 as it spread its gay pinions to float, rather 

 than fly, down the steady little wind which 

 drew along with the stream's course. We left 

 all the other birds behind us. The herons 

 and bitterns, describing the arc of a circle to 

 avoid us, invariably turned up the stream in 

 their flight, and the little sandpipers and shad- 

 owy looking waders of smaller kinds merely 

 flitted from side to side of the water. 



Sitting with my back to the guide and 

 watching the halcyon's manoeuvres, I began in 

 an idle way to generate a fantastic theory con- 

 necting its flight with our own by a thread of 

 fatalistic destiny. He, the beautiful, happy 

 bird, was on the wind current ; we on the 

 water-stream. We were in a frail rotten 

 canoe ; he on his own splendid wings. How 

 delightfully easy for him to evade death or 

 even danger, whilst we, despite all exertions to 

 the contrary, might soon speed right down to 

 • destruction ! An underlying stone too near 

 the surface could crush our craft into shreds. 

 This bird of the hard, metallic laugh might be 

 the demon of the stream leading us on to the 

 rapids, to shout and scream and jeer when we 

 were dashed to pieces in the canon. 



I noted now, by a glance, that our velocity 

 was gradually increasing, and that we were 

 following the sinuations of a sort of central 

 current, which flowed among great bowlders 

 and angular fragments of granite. The guide 

 used the paddle merely as a rudder, and the 



