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.
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