very first of spring there had been a landslide. The great,
partly overhanging rock, seamed and split by the wedges of countless
frosts, had all at once crumbled down beneath the tireless pressure of
the cataract. The lower fall, thus retreating, had become one with the
upper. The straight descent was now nearly five feet higher than
before,--a barrier which no voyager those waters ever knew could hope to
overcome.

The great salmon did not understand what had happened. He knew that he
had passed the barrier before, and had come to those bright, gravelled
reaches of which he was desirous. He knew that a summons which he could
not disobey was urging him on up-stream. He had no thought but to obey.
After a short rest in the deepest part of the pool,--he was alone there,
being the first of the returning migrants,--he suddenly aroused himself,
darted like a flash of silver through the green flood, and shot straight
up the face of the fall. Within three feet of the crest he came, hung
curved like a bow for a fraction of a second, glittering and splendid,
then fell back into the white smother. Again, and yet again, he essayed
the leap, gaining perhaps a foot on the second trial, but falling far
short on the third. Then, exhausted and beaten by the great impact of
the waters as he fell back defenceless, he retired to the quietest depth
of the pool to recover his strength. He felt bewildered by his failure,
and half stunned by the buffeting of the air-charged flood, which
affected him somewhat as a tornado might affect a man who was fighting
to make head against it. Moreover, there was a long crimson gash
slanting down his flank, where he had been driven against a jagged rock
as he fell.

Of all these things, however, he thought little, as he lay there in the
green deep which seethed from the turmoil passing above it. Through the
turmoil he saw the wide, clean-glittering, shallow-rippled gravel-bars
of the upper stream, golden under the sun and blue-white under the moon.
These he saw as he remembered them, and he saw the loud barrier to be
passed before he could reach them. As he brooded, his courage summoned
back his strength. Again he flashed up, with a power and swiftness that
seemed irresistible, and again he shot into the spray-thick air on the
face of the fall. Again he hung there for a half a heart-beat, spent, to
fall back baffled and confused. Again and again, however, he flashed
back to the trial, undaunted in spiri