Cape Breton's Magazine

INDIAN BROOK. 1890. CONTINUED I was startled by a loud, angry cry which rang out suddenly among the treetops. I stopped, and peered upwards. Another scream echoed from the hills, and two great birds with fierce and eager eyes swooped towards me, pausing among the branches to watch me with hostile curiosity. Their coloring and size made me confident that they were gos? hawk. When a smaller hawk, holding a squir- The northern curve of the rock basin*s wall was broken by a narrow, perpendicular rift reaching from the sky down to within sixty or eighty feet of the surface of the pool. This was the door through which Indian Brook had, since the time of the glaciers, sprung from the bosom of the mountain, and by which it was now pouring its compressed mass, with a single motion, into the dark depths of the basin. Looking through the rift, I could discern only a few yards of flat water rac- rel in its clutch, flew into a neighboring tree, one of the goshawks hurled itself upon ing toward its fall, and black walls of the intruder and drove it from view. They rock scowling upon the mad stream which would have liked to expel me in the same way.swept past them. These walls rose to meet the spruce forest; the forest sloped far An hour and a half, or more, after leaving upwards to meet the pale blue sky, and the Angus MacDonald*s, I heard the booming sound slender points of the highest trees were of the Indian Brook Falls. Pushing through now faintly touched by the morning light. the last screen of fallen timber and under? brush, I gained the crumbling edge of cliff overhanging the river. Far beneath, the foam-flecked water crept along the bottom of a dark, narrow canyon. It passed away This scene of beauty is a focus of Nature's deepest and purest life; and though in it man has no place, it does not on that ac? count lack meaning or significance. Man is southward between lofty walls of rock, above a masterful figure in the drama of creation, which stood the forest and the higher slopes but he is not all, nor even half, what the of the mountains. The space into which I was world has long been taught to consider him. looking was a vast, circular pit, a pothole Perhaps he has been studied too much. Cer- of enormous size worn in the rock by whirl- tainly Nature, unspoiled by his greed, has ing water during unnumbered ages. Its height not been studied enough, or loved enough, seemed to be as great as its diameter, and Standing in that fair solitude, as much a- either would be measured by hundreds of feet.lone as on some atoll in a distant sea, I Although at high water Indian Brook doubt less covers the whole bottom of this bowl, at this time a long, slender sand spit projected from the western wall to the mid? dle of the dark brovm pool, • l;/-'. felt as though I might know man betteri see him in stronger contrasts and clearer lights, if I could live apart from him longer in such still, calm, holy places as Indian Brook canvon. 4-- c.; "" '?? iridian Brook Palls. Neil MacLeod told'us that his father told" him that the Great Palls were twice as high. One winter there was a terrific build-up of ice and in the sprinfg the ice came down carrying withlit half the vall of the falls. Cape Breton* s Ma5;azine/24