588 THE GOLDEN EAGLE. 



swoops down upon it from some obscure height, and takes 

 it by surprise. Then bearing it away to an elevated point, 

 in a tree or on a ledge of a high rock, he plucks it clean, 

 and eats at leisure. The loftiest mountains are his home, 

 and on the shelvings of their most rugged precipices he 

 locates his eyrie. Occasionally he may make a detour into 

 the settled parts of the country, soaring high, and in slow, 

 wide and most majestic circles; or, if he pass from one 

 mountain height to some other in the distance, it is by the 

 highest possible pathway in the sky. If he be in certain 

 stages of plumage, with good eyes, and the light favorable, 

 one may distinguish him, as a great rarity, by the dark band 

 on his white tail. But generally, if one would study him, one 

 must go to the uninhabited and almost uninhabitable parts 

 of the earth, far above the ordinary planes of animated 

 nature, and there contemplate him in the sublimest solitude. 

 As he climbs to the very clouds, and penetrates '' behind 

 the veil of the storm," even the mountains are low down 

 in respect to h-im, and he seems to know and care but little 

 about the world. He who shoots a Golden Eagle secures 

 a rare trophy, and may be assured that he will not repeat 

 his success very often in a life-time. Though seldom seen, 

 they are not considered as rare on the continent; and it may 

 be doubted, indeed, whether there are any fewer of them 

 " to-day in Eastern North America than there were when the 

 Pilgrims landed at Plymouth." In fact, such is their ele- 

 vation above the ordinary range of human life, so nearly 

 inaccessible are their breeding places, and such is their 

 wariness and sagacity, that it is difficult to conceive of a 

 time when their numbers may be seriously impaired, or 

 their habits or habitat essentially modified. The nest of 

 this species is on the most inaccessible points of huge 

 mountain walls; it is bulky, and rudely built of sticks, 



