N a circular hollow in the clean, bright gravel of the river-bar the tiny egg of the great Quahdavic salmon stirred to life. For months it had lain there among its thousands of fellows, with the clear, cold, unsullied current streaming over it ceaselessly. Through the autumn the wilderness sunshine and the bracing wilderness air, playing on the unshaded shallows of the wide stream, had kept the water highly vitalized,—though this was hardly necessary in that pure and spring-fed current. When the savage northern winter closed down upon the high valley of the Quahdavic it found difficulty in freezing the swift current that ran rippling over the bar; and when, at last, the frost conquered, gripping and clutching through the long, windless nights, it was to form only a thin armour of transparent, steel-strong The bar on which the parent salmon had hollowed their round gravel nest was far up the Great South Branch of the Quahdavic, not many miles from the little cold spring lake that was its source. The Great South Branch was a stream much loved by the salmon, for its deep pools, its fine gravel spawning-beds, the purity and steady coldness of its current, and the remoteness which protected it from the visits of greedy poachers. In all its course there was but one serious obstruction, namely, the Big Falls, where the stream fell about twelve feet in one pitch, then roared down for half a mile over a succession of low ledges with deep pools between. The Falls were such that vigorous fish had no real trouble in surmounting them. But they inexorably weeded out the weaklings. No feeble salmon ever got to the top of that straight and thunderous pitch. Therefore, as the spawning-bars were all above the Falls, it was a fine, long-finned, clean swimming breed of salmon that was bred in the Great South Branch. When the tiny egg in the gravel stirred to life, The egg from which he came having been one of the first to hatch, the tiny salmon mentioned in the opening paragraph was one of the first of the host to find his strength and to start the migration shoreward from the nest on the noisy bar. Perhaps a score started with him, trying the current, darting back to shelter, then more boldly venturing again. A passing trout, hungry and fierce-eyed, darted above them, heading up against the current; but being so few and scattered, When again the salmon atom adventured forth, he found himself in a greater company. Hundreds more of the tiny creatures had left the nest and were moving shoreward with him. As the defenceless throng advanced, he saw a couple of what seemed to him gigantic creatures dashing hither and thither among them, snapping them up greedily by twos and threes; and he himself barely escaped those greedy jaws by shooting forward in the nick of time. These seeming monsters were but young redfins, a couple of inches in length, whom he would soon come to despise and chase from his feeding-grounds. "HE SAW A BIG SUCKER SETTLE LAZILY WHERE THE THRONGING FRY WERE THICKEST." His superior development and speed having so well served him, he was now a foot or more in advance of the throng, and so escaped another and even more wide-ranging peril. A huge shadow, as vast as that of the trout, swept down upon them, and as he shrank beneath a sharpedged stone he saw a big sucker settle lazily where the thronging fry were thickest. With round, horribly dilating and contracting mouth Among the little stones close to shore, where the water was hardly more than an inch deep, even the greedy young redfins would not venture. Nevertheless there were plenty of enemies waiting eagerly for the coming of the fry, and the little fellow whose one hour of seniority had made him the pioneer of the shoal found all his ability taxed to guard the speck of life which he had so lately achieved. Keeping far enough from shore to avoid being stranded by some whimsical ripple, he nevertheless avoided the depths that were sufficient for the free hunting of the predatory minnows and redfins. Such of his kinsfolk as stayed farther out soon served, the greater number of them, as food for the larger river dwellers, while those who went too close inshore got cast up on the sand to die, or were pounced upon, as they lay close to the surface, Even at the safest and most cunningly chosen depth, however, the little pioneer had plenty of perils to guard against. Secure from the suckers and redfins on the one hand, and from the mosquitoes on the other, he had yet for enemies certain predatory larvÆ and water-beetles, as well as a few inch-long youngsters of the trout family, who were very active and rapacious. There was a water-beetle with hooked, pincer-like jaws and lightning rapidity of movement, which kept him almost ceaselessly on the alert, and filled him with wholesome terror as he saw it capture and devour numbers of his less nimble or less wary kin. And one day, when he had chanced, in the company of his diminished school of fry, to drift into a shallow cove where there was no current at all to disturb the water, he was chased by the terrible larva of a dragon-fly. The strange- By this time the little salmon was between two and three inches long. He was what those learned in matters pertaining to the salmon would have called a "parr". His colouring was very beautiful, in a higher key than the colouring of a trout, and more brilliant, if less showy. There was none of the pink of the trout, but a clear silvery tone on sides and belly, with a shining blue-black along the back. The sides were marked with a row of black dots, set far apart and accentuated by a yellow flush around them, and with another row of spots of most vivid scarlet. Along the sides There were now not more than two score of his brothers and sisters left alive, and these scattered far and wide over the shoaling stream. It was high summer in the Quahdavic country, and the Great South Branch was beginning to show its ledges and sandy bars above water. Deep green the full-leaved boughs of elm and ash, poplar and cedar leaned above the current; and along the little wild-meadows which here and there bordered the stream, where the lumbermen had had camps or "landings", the misty pink-purple blossoms of the milkweed poured a wild sweetness upon the air. In a shallow run near the shore, where the sunlight, falling through an overhanging cedar "sweeper", dappled the clear ripples, and the current was about eight inches deep, and there was no pool near to tempt the larger fish, the active and wary little parr took up his Lying with his head up-stream, his long fins and broad tail slowly waving to hold him in his position against the current, the little parr waited and watched while his food was brought down to him by the untiring flow. Sometimes it was a luckless leaf-grub, or a caddis-worm torn from his moorings, that came tumbling and bumping down along the smooth pebbles of the bottom, to be gathered into the young salmon's eager maw. Sometimes it was a fly or moth or bee or beetle that came bobbing with drenched, helpless wings along the tops of the ripples. And once in awhile a pink-shelled baby crawfish in its wanderings would come sidling across the run, and be promptly gobbled up in spite of the futile threatenings of its tiny claws. The river was liberal in its providing for its most favoured children, these aristocratic and beautiful parr, so the youngster grew apace in his bright run. Happy though his life was now, in every kind of weather, he was still beset with perils. He had, Another peril that kept the young parr on the alert—an ever imminent and particularly appalling peril—was the foraging of the kingfishers. A pair of these noisy and diligent birds had their nest of six little ones in a hole in the red bluff just above the run, and they took ceaseless tribute from the finny tribes of the river. Like an azure arrow one of them would dart down into the river with a loud splash, and flap up again, In leaping at the flies which came down the surface of the run the little salmon one day got a severe but invaluable lesson. A large and gaudy fly, unlike anything that he had ever encountered before, appeared on the ripples over his head. Still more unlike those which he had encountered before, it did not hurry downward with the water, but maintained its position in a most mysterious fashion. While the parr eyed it curiously, wondering whether to try it or not, it suddenly moved straight up against the current, and was followed at a short distance by another queer-looking big fly, green and brown like a grasshopper. Excited "HELD FIRMLY BETWEEN THE EDGES OF HIS GREAT BEAK." A moment later, however, the two flies reappeared, slipping very slowly down the current, mounting up again directly in the teeth of it, sometimes dancing on the surface, sometimes sinking a little below it, but always remaining the same distance apart, and always behaving in a manner mysteriously independent of the power of the stream. For a few seconds the parr eyed them with distrust. Then growing excited by their strange actions, he dashed forward fiercely and caught the gaudy red fly in his jaws. There was a prick, a twitch, a frightful jerk,—and he found himself dragged forth into the strangling upper air, where he fell flopping on the dry gravel of the shore. As he lay gasping and struggling on the hot pebbles, which scorched off the delicate bloom from his tender skin, a tall shape stooped over him, and a great hand, its fingers as long as his All through the summer and autumn the little parr was kept very busy, feeding, and dodging his enemies, and playing in the cheerful, shallow "run" beneath the cedar. When the early "LEAPING HIGH OUT OF THE POOLS." Still later, when, instead of flies and beetles, there fell upon the darkening surface of the river little pale specks which vanished as he snatched at them, he grew fiercely and inexplicably discontented. What he longed for he did not know; but he knew it was nowhere in the waters about him, neither along the edges of the shore, where now the ice was forming in crisp fringes. All about him he saw the big salmon,—their sides lean and flat, their brilliant colours darkened and faded,—swimming down languidly with the strenuous current. Hitherto their movements had been all up-stream,—upward, upward incessantly and gladly. Now the old energy and joy of life seemed all gone out of them. Never IILong-finned and full of vigour, the smelt was not dismayed when he came to heavier water, exchanging the region of the gravelly bars for a space of broken ledges, where the great current roared hither and thither and lashed itself into foam. Through these loud chutes and miniature falls he shot safely, though not at first without some trepidation. The lean, slab-sided salmon, or "slinks", who were his travelling companions, served as his involuntary guides. Except to make use of them in this way once or twice, he paid them little attention; though now and again a big lantern-jawed fellow would rush at him The Great South Branch, soon after the region of the wild ledges was past, fell into quiet ways, and crept for a few miles with deep, untroubled current through a land of alders. Here the winter, which had by this time settled down upon the high Quahdavic country, had its will, and the river was frozen and snow-covered from shore to shore. The smelt, as he journeyed beneath the ice, was puzzled and disturbed by the unusual dimness of the light that filtered down to him. This was a condition, however, which he soon left behind. Swollen by the influx of several lesser streams, the Great South now burst its fetters and thundered along through a series of tumultuous rapids. Then above the thunder of these rapids came a louder, heavier roar, a trampling whose vibration carried a warning to the traveller. He paused for a moment; but seeing that the salmon swam on without hesitation or apparent misgiving, he dashed forward-confidently into the tumult. A moment more and he was hurled onward bewilderingly, dashed downward through a smother of broken water which held so much air in it that it almost choked him, and shot into After a very brief rest in the basin below the Falls, to recover his self-possession, the smelt, with many other migrants, resumed his seaward journey. The Great South presently, with a long rush, united its waters with those of the main Quahdavic. Down this full-flowing stream he swam steadily for three uneventful days, to find himself at length in a mighty river whose amber-brown current was a surprise to him after the clear, greenish floods in which he had been born. It took him several days, journeying leisurely, and feeding moderately as he went, to get accustomed to the change in the water. And barely had he become accustomed to it when another and more startling change confronted him. The current, flowing strongly in one direction, would change for a time and flow directly against him. This was confusing. But it was not by any means the worst. A strange, bitter taste was in the At first the brackishness in the water repelled him; but almost at once he found himself accepting it with avidity. At the same time he could not but observe a sudden awakening of interest in life among the languid "slinks". They began to show a better appetite, to move about more alertly, to make themselves more dangerous to the smaller fish that crossed their paths. The water grew more and more salt,—with an ever increasing zest to it which made the smelt amazingly keen for his food. Then the shield of ice above him, beneath which he had so long travelled, suddenly vanished, and through long, free shoreless waves he felt the sunlight streaming down to him unimpeded. The water was now no longer tawny brown, but green. He had reached the sea. For some reason which he could never have explained,—for he certainly felt no affection for them,—the smelt, with others like himself, kept travelling more or less in the company of the reviving "slinks". Like all the rest of the strong-*finned, silver-sided host, he was now feeding with a ravenousness of appetite unknown to him in the When the young salmon had been about three months in the sea, growing diligently all the time, a strange but potent influence impelled him, along with most of his companioning hordes, to turn and journey backward toward the coast whence he had come. He was now about five pounds in weight, and if he had fallen into the hands of a fisherman he would have been labelled a "grilse". His companions were nearly all grilse like himself, varying in weight from two and a half to four or five pounds, with here and there a big, adult salmon journeying majestically among them. The majority of the full-grown salmon had preceded them shoreward by anything from one month to four, under the urge of the homing and parental instinct. As the big grilse journeyed he went on growing daily, till by the time he found himself back in the waters of the Gulf he was a good six pounds in weight. As he mounted nearer the surface and drew inshore he passed the mouths of various rivers and encountered swirling currents of brackish water. At each of these river-mouths numbers of the host would separate and turn up the freshening tide. But our grilse kept right on, making unerringly for his mighty native stream. And those that continued with him were more in number than those that turned aside. It was during this journey down offshore that perils once more began to assail the young salmon, perils which it took all his good luck and keen activities to evade. For one thing, there were dogfish. These miniature sharks, with their savage mouths set far under their snouts, were no match for the grilse, or any of his kind, in speed; but the latter, being unsuspicious, came very near being caught unawares. A swift surge of his long fins and powerful tail saved him, just in time. He shot away like a silver streak as the fierce jaws snapped sharply at his flank. After that he kept his eyes alert on the approach of any fish in the least degree larger than himself. And Another and equally deadly peril was one that took several forms. Once as he swam swiftly but easily onward, he saw a number of his companions, who chanced to be a little ahead of him, stop abruptly and engage in what seemed to him a meaningless struggle. Ever suspicious, he checked himself and tried to make out what was the matter. The struggle was desperate, but the adversary at first invisible. In a moment, however, he detected a mesh of fine, brown lines, which seemed to surround and grapple with the unfortunate fish. Not waiting to investigate further, he retreated with a nervous flurry of speed. Then, since nothing could divert his homeward impulse, he dived almost to the bottom and continued his journey, not returning toward the dangerous surface till he was nearly a mile beyond the throttling peril of the drift-net. But there were yet other nets, and as he entered the great outrush of his native river he encountered them on every side, stretched on rows of stakes running far out into the channels. These "set Leagues up the great river, after mounting several noisy but not difficult rapids, the grilse came to a halt for the first time in a deep and spacious pool which swarmed with his fellows. Here he rested, and here he made light, casual meals, jumping at the little flies which fell upon the swirling surface of the pool. Once the bright yellow body of a struggling wasp allured him,—but just as he was rising to gulp it in, a memory, vague but terrifying, swung dimly up into his brain from the far-off days when he had been A day's journey beyond the pool, a great outrush of colder water, green-white against the amber tide of the main river, greeted the returning grilse, and he found himself in the mouth of his native Quahdavic. It was a scanter and shallower stream, however, than when he left it, for now the long heats of the summer had shrunken all the watercourses. As he mounted the clear current he now encountered fierce rapids, and ledges boiling with foam, which put his swimming prowess to the test. After a day of these rapids and ledges and shallow rips, he felt quite ready to halt once more in a great green pool where After a few days in this pool, he was surprised one early morning by the sight of a long, dark shape gliding over the surface. From its side, near the hinder end, a strange-looking, narrow fin thrust downward from time to time, and with heavy swirls propelled the dark shape. The strange apparition disturbed him, and he grew restless and watchful. A few minutes after it had passed there came a faint splash on the surface above him, and a big, curious-looking fly appeared. It sank an inch or two, moved against the current, and was then withdrawn. He eyed it with scorn, remembering his former experience with such. But when, a moment later, the strange fly appeared again, he was amazed to see one of the biggest salmon in the pool rise lazily and suck it down. The next instant there was a terrific commotion. He saw the great fish rush hither and thither up and down and around the pool, now scattering the whitefish on the bottom, now splashing upon the surface and leaping half Late in the day the returning traveller came to the mouth of the Big South Branch. Without hesitation he turned up that turbulent but shrunken stream, knowing it for his own; and he made no stop till he reached the deep, green, foamy pool at the foot of the Falls. Being still comparatively fresh, and very restless, he swam all round the pool, and took a crafty survey of the terrific obstacle before him. But among the sojourners in the pool were many fish with bleeding sides, who had essayed the leap in vain and were waiting to recuperate their energies for another effort. So he, too, paused a little, gathering his young strength. The Falls of the Big South were about twelve feet in total height. There were two leaps, the upper one, of about three feet, rolling down into a hollow shelf of sandstone some six or eight feet in width, and the lower, dropping nine feet sheer "VANQUISHED IN THEIR OWN ELEMENT BY THE MINK." Every day there were new arrivals at the spawning-beds, and among them the strong and wary grilse soon found a mate. She was considerably larger than he, a trim young salmon of the second year and perhaps nine pounds in weight. But his radiant colouring, his strength and his activity, as he swam around her and displayed his charms, appeared to content her. With his bony nose he dug her a circular nest in the gravel, where the current ran clear but not too strong; and in this nest she laid her countless eggs, while he rubbed his side caressingly against her shining flanks. When her eggs were all laid and fertilized he drifted away from her, dropped down to the nearest pool, and lay there sluggish and uninterested for awhile, until, seized once more by the longing for the great salt tide, he joined a returning company of "slinks" and hurried back down-river to the sea. IIIWhen he reached the deep sea once more, and regained his appetite among the sweeping tides, he once more began to grow. His fins became This time he let nearly the whole round of the year go by, feeding at leisure and lazily dodging the seals, among the icy but populous tides that swung beyond the mouth of Hudson Straits. Then, late the following winter, long before the dark earth had any word of spring, spring stirred secretly in his veins, and he remembered the sunny gravel bars of the Great South Branch. The sudden urge of his desire turned him about, and he began to swim tirelessly southward, companioned by an ardent, silvery host into whose veins at the same time the same compelling summons had been flashed. It was late May when the returning salmon, having successfully eluded the snares of the nets and the assaults of harbour seal and dogfish, came again to the mouth of his native river and fanned Perhaps ten minutes after the gaudy fly had disappeared, the big salmon saw a brown furry shape, more like a very young squirrel than anything else, go floating down the current. Other His first impulse was to rush madly across the pool in an effort to escape the small tormentor. But memory and experience, added to that native cunning which had brought him safely through so many perils, now came to his rescue. Instead of rushing to the surface and performing wild feats which would have soon worn him out while delighting the soul of his enemy, he turned resolutely back to his course and bored his way to the bottom against the exasperating pressure of rod Presently, however, the great salmon decided to change his tactics. Though he did not know it, he had already loosened the hook appreciably, tearing the cartilage of his jaw. Now, having craftily eyed for some seconds the fine, taut, almost invisible line of gut as it slanted off through the water, he made a long, swift rush straight in the direction in which the line was striving to pull him. Instantly the pull ceased, the line fell slack. But he felt the hook, with its furry attachment, still clinging at the side of his mouth. He passed straight under the dark shape of the canoe, and heard a sharp, vibrant sound above him, something like the song of a locust, which was the noise of the big salmon reel as the fisherman made wild haste to take in the slack of the line. As he In tremendous indignation and trepidation the great salmon now darted from the pool and up against the wild current of the Quahdavic. In the next pool he delayed for but a few minutes, not resting, but swimming about restlessly and stirring up the other salmon with his excitement. Then, accompanied by three or four of those whom his nervous activity had aroused, he pressed onward. Through rapid and chute and pool, and white-churned trough where rocks scored the bed of the river, he darted tirelessly, and up the clear torrent of the Great South Branch; and he never halted till he found himself in the boiling basin of green and foam at the foot of the Falls. The basin was a very different place now from that which he had visited as a grilse. Into its vexed deeps the flood fell with the heavy trampling of thunder, which was echoed back and forth between the high broken rocks enclosing the basin. At the 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, glitter 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 Just about this time a visitor from the hills had come shambling down to the river-edge,—one of the great black bears of the Quahdavic valley. Sitting contemplatively on her haunches, her little, cunning eyes had watched the vain leaps of the salmon. She knew a good deal about salmon and her watching was not mere curiosity. As the efforts of the brave fish grew feebler and feebler she drew down closer and closer to the edge of the water, till it frothed about her feet. When, at last, the salmon came blindly into the eddy and turned upon his side, the bear was but a few feet distant. She crept forward like a cat, crouched,—and a great black paw shot around with a clutching sweep. Gasping and quivering, |