"Valiant," "Tiptoe" And "Ploughboy" Were Close To Him, And I Counted The Other Hounds In The Line, Fully Expecting To Miss Half Of Them.

To my surprise and delight, only one was absent; this was poor "Phrenzy." The others had all managed to save themselves.

I now crossed the river by leaping from rock to rock with some difficulty, and with hands and knees I climbed the opposite bank. This was about sixty feet high, from the top of which the mountain commenced its ascent, which, though very precipitous was so covered with long lemon grass that it was easy enough to climb. I looked behind me, and there was the Tamby, all right, within a few paces.

The elk was no longer in sight, and the roar of the water was so great 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.

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