SAGACITY OF THE HOUND THE INDIAN PASS PRECIPICE

TWO THOUSAND FEET HIGH.

BACKWOODS, July 6.

DEAR H:

THE famous Indian Pass is probably the most remarkable gorge in this country, if not in the world. On Monday morning, a council was called of our party, to determine whether we should visit it, for the effects of the severe tramp two days before, had not yet left us, and hardly one walked without limping-as for myself, I could not wear my boots and had borrowed a pair of large shoes. But the Indian Pass I was determined to see, even if I remained behind alone, and so we all together started off. It was six miles through the forest, and we were compelled to march in single file. At one moment skirting the margin of a beautiful lake, and then creeping through thickets, or stepping

daintily across a springing morass, we picked our way until we at length struck a stream, the bed of which we followed into the bosom of the mountains. We crossed deer paths every few rods, and soon the two hounds Cheney had taken with him, parted from us, and their loud deep bay began to ring and echo through the gorge.

The instincts with which animals are endowed by their Creator, on purpose to make them successful in the chase, is one of the most curious things in nature. I watched for a long time the actions of one of these noble hounds. With his nose close to the leaves, he would double backwards and forwards on a track, to see whether it was fresh or not-then abandon it at once, when he found it too old. At length, striking a fresh one, he started off; but the next moment, finding he was going back instead of forwards on the track, he wheeled, and came dashing past on a furious run, his eyes glaring with excitement. Soon his voice made the forest ring; and I con1 imagine the quick start it gave to the deer, quietly grazing, it might have been, a mile away. Lifting his beautiful head a moment, to ascertain if that cry of death was on his track, he bounded off in the long chase and

bold swim for life. Well; let them pass: the cry grows fainter and fainter; and they-the pursued and the pursuer-are but an emblem of what is going on in the civilized world from which I am severed. Life may be divided into two parts-the hunters and the hunted. It is an endless chase, where the timid and the weak constantly fall by the way. The swift racers come and go like shadows on the vision; and the cries of fear and of ictory swell on the ear and die away, only to give ce to another and another. Thus musing, I ed on; at length, we left the bed of the , and began to climb amid broken rocks that iled in huge chaos, up and up, as far as the 'd reach. My rifle became such a burden, as compelled to leave it against a tree, rk erected near by, to determine its lod expected, from paintings I had seen hat I was to walk almost on a level

p between two mountains, and look pices that toppled heaven high above e was a world of rocks, overgrown with oss-over and under and between which compelled to crawl and dive and work our