16 THE WILSON QUARTERLY. 



quite a while until the whole flock gradually worked out of 

 sight. Industry was apparently unrewarded in this case. 



Knowing that I wished to kill an Eagle, one of the farm 

 hands offered one day to take me within gunshot of a pair. 

 He was hauling pine straw with a cart and yoke of steers, 

 and said that if I would get into the cart, he would drive 

 me right heneath a pine in which were a pair of tliem. I 

 grahhed my gun and a few shells loaded with No. 1, and 

 jumped into the cart in a hurry. By and by we came 

 within sight of the tree ; and there they were sure enough, 

 two splendid white-headed fellows, the sight of which set 

 my heart thumping like the recoil of an old musket loaded 

 for " baar." On we went, the cart jerking and jolting over 

 the stumps and prostrate sticks until right beneath the 

 tree. This was my first experience of being within gunshot 

 of an Eagle, and to say that I was flurried is putting it 

 mildly. Instead of jumping out and taking a fair shot 

 from solid ground, I stayed in the cart, aimed at the lower 

 one of the two, and fired just as the wheel of the cart 

 flopped down in a rut. The shot went somewhere, probably 

 not within ten yards of what I aimed at, and as the birds 

 left the tree, I gave them the other barrel — with like 

 success. I pass over the next five ninutes : what was said 

 was not for publication, but only as a guarantee of my good 

 faith. 



In driving over to the store at the steamer landing on the 

 canal, the Albemarle and Chesapeake, one day, an Eagle 

 was seen on a sand bar, running out into Coin jock Bay. 

 feeding. I got out of the buggy and with my .38 Smith and 

 Wesson in hand, crept up behind the bushes as near as I 

 could. The Eagle saw me and rose, and I gave him all five 

 bullets as quick as I could pull trigger, but he did not stop. 

 In fact he seemed quite in a hurry to get away. 



On several occasions in coming back home through the 

 pines, one of these great birds would crash out of the trees 

 in front and sometimes a snap shot would be tried, always 

 unsuccessfully, however. To tell the truth I did not kill an 

 Eagle while I was there, but could probably have collected 



