90 BY- WAYS A AD BIRD-NOTES. 



more than the mere modicum contained in the 

 anticipation of pleasurable sensations, has 

 entered, or crises of the imagination based 

 wholly on phantasmal exigencies. I reach 

 back the powers of my memory now, and they 

 fetch up out of the past, even to the minutest 

 detail, the whole of that little period of time 

 during which I waited, with bated breath and 

 condensed expectancy, to see a god ! 



The river was bearing us on at a rate of 

 speed which, but for the silent evenness of the 

 motion, would have been frightful under better 

 circumstances. But the wood of which the 

 pirogue was made — it must have been yellow 

 tulip — seemed so unsound and semi-disinte- 

 grated that the wonder was it did not dissolve 

 into a flake of vegetable mould upon the water, 

 and thus let us sink ! 



A vast white bird, probably a snowy heron 

 the Garzetta candidissima of our naturalists, 

 swept majestically across from side to side of 

 the river, directly over the mysterious shining 

 line and just hitherward of the pale mist, 

 quickly losing itself among the trees. Again 

 I saw, or imagined, shadowy forms stealing 

 through rifts in the flower-sprent glooms of the 

 woods. But they were less satisfactory than 

 the dimmest forms of a dream. I could not 

 follow them a second of time. 



A broad booming heralded our approach to 

 the cataract. We felt no motion, so steady- 

 was our sweep, and yet we were leaving the 

 dreamy wind behind us. Halcyon, with erect 

 and dishevelled crest, led on in an ecstasy of 

 chirp and flutter. I became aware, through 

 some slight, ominously decisive movement of • 

 th& guide, that he. was preparing for a supreme 



