“By to-morrow they would miss me, and organize a search, with Fred at their head. They would find my footprints beside the brook, where I had leaped carelessly across after pansies; then they would come upon the blackened traces of the little fire, and the loosened gravel of the steep bank; they would look upward with a shudder, and search the harder. Pretty soon one of them would lean over a crevice among the bowlders, shrink back with a cry of horror, and beckon to the others. All this if I failed by one step!
“Still I worked on laboriously, often pausing for giddiness or a want of breath, and digging with my finger-nails little hollows in the hard bank for my feet.
“Once or twice a long, tough root of grass saved me; and soon, to my joy, straggling bushes, strong enough to support a few pounds of weight, thrust their tops through the sand-bed.
“Then came scrubby trees, cedar and fir, oftentimes growing straight out from a vertical face of rock, and quivering from root to tip as I drew myself cautiously up.
“I shall never forget the agony of the moment when one of them came out entirely, and let me fall backward. Fortunately its comrades were near enough to save me, though it was with rough hands.
“To shorten the story, I climbed at last out upon a small, level spot, which proved to be the longed-for path.
“Following it painfully up for a few rods, I reached a little hut, where I found a kind old Frenchwoman, who refreshed me with food and drink, helped me to make my tattered clothes presentable, and held up her hands after the demonstrative fashion of her nation, when she heard of my climb.
“‘Had any one ever ascended to the cataract upon that side?’” I asked.
“‘Jamais, monsieur; jamais, jamais!’” (Never, monsieur; never, never.)
“And could she tell me the height from the valley?”