ut of
them; several did not get more than half their length out of the water,
and occasionally only an impotent nose would protrude from the foam.
One fish made a leap of three or four feet and landed on an apron of
the dam and tumbled helplessly back; he shot up like a bird and rolled
back like a clod. This was the only view of salmon, the buck of the
rivers, we had on our journey.

It was a bright and flawless midsummer day that we sailed down the
Saguenay, and nothing was wanting but a good excuse for being there.
The river was as lonely as the St. John's road; not a sail or a
smokestack the whole sixty-five miles. The scenery culminates at Cape
Trinity, where the rocks rise sheer from the water to a height of
eighteen hundred feet. This view dwarfed anything I had ever before
seen. There is perhaps nothing this side the Yosemite chasm that equals
it, and, emptied of its water, this chasm would far surpass that famous
canon, as the river here is a mile and a quarter deep. The bald eagle
nests in the niches in the precipice secure from any intrusion. Immense
blocks of the rock had fallen out, leaving areas of shadow and clinging
overhanging masses that were a terror and fascination to the eye. There
was a great fall a few years ago, just as the steamer had passed from
under and blown her whistle to awake the echoes. The echo came back,
and with it a part of the mountain that astonished more than it
delighted the lookers-on. The pilot took us close around the base of
the precipice that we might fully inspect it. And here my eyes played
me a trick the like of which they had never done before. One of the
boys of the steamer brought to the forward deck his hands full of
stones, that the curious ones among the passengers might try how easy
it was to throw one ashore. "Any girl ought to do it," I said to
myself, after a man had tried and had failed to clear half the
distance. Seizing a stone, I cast it with vigor and confidence, and as
much expected to see it smite the rock as I expected to live. "It is a
good while getting there," I mused, as I watched its course: down,
down it went; there, it will ring upon the granite in half a breath;
no, down--into the water, a little more than halfway! "Has my arm lost
its cunning?" I said, and tried again and again, but with like result.
The eye was completely at fault. There was a new standard of size
before it to which it failed to adjust itself. The rock is so enormous
and towers