About half a mile from where she lay there fell into the sea a broad and placid river. They found this navigable, even to the cutter, for many miles inland, and the scenes that lay before them, as reach after reach and bend after bend of it was opened out, was romantic and beautiful in the extreme. The stream ran through the centre of a lovely glen or gorge, “o’erhung,” as the poet says, “by wild woods thickening green.” Here was every variety of foliage—trees, and shrubs, and flowers. At times it would be a dense forest all around them, but in the very next reach perhaps, the banks would be green-carpeted with moss and grass, with rocks rising upwards here and there be-draped with wild vines. On the higher lands commenced a forest of pines; far beyond these weird-looking trees the snow-clad peaks of rugged mountains could be seen. In exploring this river they were much struck at the multitude of tributaries it had, little streamlets that stole down through bosky ravines, following the course of any of which brought the travellers to the table-land above. Here was the forest, and here too were broad tracks of a kind of prairie land covered with a carpet of buffalo-grass.
In a country like this it would be patent to any one that there existed unlimited scope for sport of all kinds, for while the woods and jungles and plains abounded in game of every sort, from the strange little rock rabbit to the lordly elk and bison, the rivers they soon found out teemed with fish. They were not long, however, in making a discovery of not quite so pleasing a character. This was due to Seth’s sagacity.
“I guess,” he said one evening, “we’ve got some of my old friends here.”
“What! not Indians?” asked Rory, opening wide his eyes.
“I don’t allude to them ’xactly,” said Seth; “but I does allude to the grizzlies.”
“Oh! I should like to have an adventure with one of these chaps, shouldn’t you, Ralph?”
“I don’t know,” replied Ralph, with a quiet smile; “I think I should rather run from one than fight him, if all stories I’ve heard about them be true.”
“What is your opinion of their character?” asked McBain of Seth.
“They’re the all-firedest fellows to fight, when they do fight,” said Seth, “in creation! I’ve had a bit of fun in my time with pumas and panthers both, down south, but I’d rather fight a dozen o’ either than one grizzly after he turns rusty.”
“Do you mean rusty in coat?” asked Rory.