Before we follow our young explorer to the place, let us give you, good reader, some views of this part of Montana as it was and as it now appears.
We recently looked out on the island that once lifted the great black eagle's nest over the plunging torrent of water--the nest famous, doubtless, among the Indians, long before the days of Lewis and Clarke.
We were shown, in the city of Great Falls, a mounted eagle, which, it was claimed, came from this nest amid the mists and rainbows.

The fall near this island, in the surges, is now known as the Black Eagle's Fall.
This waterfall has not the beauty or the grandeur of the other cataracts--the Rainbow Falls and the Great Falls--a few miles distant.

But it gathers the spell of poetic tradition about it, and strongly appeals to the sense of the artist and the poet.

The romancer would choose it for his work, as the black eagles chose it for their home.
Near it is one of the most lovely fountains in the world, called the Giant Spring.
"Close beside the great Missouri, Ere it takes its second leap, Is a spring of sparkling water Like a river broad and deep." The spring pours out of the earth near the fall in a great natural fountain, emerald-green, clear as crystal, bordered with water-cresses, and mingles its waters with the clouded surges of the Missouri.

If a person looks down into this fountain from a point near enough for him to touch his nose to the water, all the fairy-like scenes of the Silver Springs and the Waukulla Spring in Florida appear.