that it was impossible to hear the hounds. However, I determined to
crawl along his track, which was plainly discernible, the high grass
being broken into a regular lane which skirted the precipice of the
great waterfall in the direction of the villages.

We were now about a hundred feet above, and on one side of the great
fall, looking into the deep chasm into which the river leapt, forming a
cloud of mist below. The lemon grass was so high in tufts along the
rocks that we could not see a foot before us, and we knew not whether
the next step would land us on firm footing, or deposit us some hundred
feet below. Clutching fast to the long grass, therefore, we crept
carefully on for about a quarter of a mile, now climbing the face of
the rocks, now descending by means of their irregular surfaces, but
still stirring the dark gorge down which the river fell.

At length, having left the fall some considerable distance behind us,
the ear was somewhat relieved from the bewildering noise of water, and
I distinctly heard the pack at bay not very far in advance. In another
moment I saw the elk standing on a platform of rock about a hundred
yards ahead, on a lower shelf of the mountain, and the whole pack at
bay. This platform was the top of a cliff which overhung the deep
gorge; the river flowing in the bottom after its great fall, and both
the elk and hounds appeared to be in "a fix." The descent had been made
to this point by leaping down places which he could not possibly
reascend, and there was only one narrow outlet, which was covered by
the hounds. Should he charge through the hounds to force this passage,
half a dozen of them must be knocked over the precipice.

However, I carefully descended, and soon reached the platform. This was
not more than twenty feet square, and it looked down in the gorge of
about three hundred feet. The first seventy of this depth were
perpendicular, as the top of the rock overhung, after which the side of
the cliff was marked by great fissures and natural steps formed by the
detachment from time to time of masses of rock which had fallen into
the river below. Bushes and rank grass filled the interstices of the
rocks, and an old deserted water-course lay exactly beneath the
platform, being cut and built out of the side of the cliff.

It was a magnificent sight in such grand scenery to see the buck at bay
when we arrived upon the platform. He was a dare-devil fellow, and
feared neither