He was about thirteen hands
high, and carried the most beautiful head of horns that I had
ever seen upon an elk. His mane was bristled up, his nostril was
distended, and, turning from the pack, he surveyed me, as though
taking the measure of his new antagonist. Not seeming satisfied,
he deliberately turned, and, descending from the level space, he
carefully, picked his way. Down narrow elk-runs along the steep
precipices, and, at a slow walk, with the whole pack in single
file at his heels, he clambered down toward the river. I
followed on his track over places which I would not pass in cold
blood; and I shortly halted above a cataract of some eighty feet
in depth, about a hundred paces from the great waterfall of three
hundred feet.
It was extremely grand; the roar of the falls so entirely hushed
all other sounds that the voices of the hounds were perfectly
inaudible, although within a few yards of me, as I looked down
upon them from a rock that overhung the river.
The elk stood upon the brink of the swollen torrent; he could not
retreat, as the wall of rock was behind him, with the small
step-like path by which he had descended; this was now occupied
by the yelling pack.
The hounds knew the danger of the place; but the buck, accustomed
to these haunts from his birth, suddenly leapt across the boiling
rapids, and springing from rock to rock along the verge of the
cataract, he gained the opposite side.
