LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 



stimulating bull-fight. The lassos are thrown 

 with more or less success. Some are fast, others 

 contrive to scramble away ; but when a condor is 

 caught, there is a fight, and a stout one, before it 

 is killed ; and, indeed, the stories told of its te- 

 nacity of life would be incredible were they not 

 attested by trustworthy witnesses. 



Humboldt shall be called to make out a strong 

 case. He was present when the Indians tried to 

 overcome the vitality of one which they had taken 

 alive. Having strangled it with a lasso, they 

 hanged it on a tree, pulling it forcibly by the feet 

 for several minutes, in a manner that would have 

 done credit to Mr. Calcraft and his assistants. 

 The execution being apparently over, the lasso 

 was removed ; the bird got up and walked about 

 as if nothing had happened. A pistol was then 

 fired at it, the man who fired standing within less 

 than four paces. Three balls hit the living mark, 

 wounding it in the neck, chest, and abdomen ; the 

 bird kept its legs. A fourth ball broke its thigh. 

 Then the condor fell, but it did not die of its 

 wounds till half an hour had elapsed. This bird 

 was preserved by M. Bonpland. Such direct and 

 unimpeachable evidence should make us pause 

 before we hastily discredit the accounts of older 

 writers. Ulloa was thought to have used a 

 traveller's privilege when he asserted, that in the 

 colder localities of Peru the condor is so closely 

 protected by its feathery armor, that eight or ten 

 balls might be heard to strike without penetrating, 

 or, at least, bringing down the bird. 



Not that we give credence to the stories of 

 the condor's carrying off children ; indeed, the evi- 

 dence is against such a statement ; and still less 

 do we believe the accounts of their attacking men 

 and women. At all events. Sir Francis Head has 

 proved that a Cornish miner is a match for one of 

 these great vultures. Humboldt allows that two 

 of them would be dangerous foes when opposed to 

 one man ; but he frequently came within ten or 

 twelve feet of a rock on which three or four of 

 them were perched, and they never offered to mo- 

 lest him. Indeed, the Alpine lammergeyer,* the 

 Phene of Aristotle and ^Elian, is little inferior, 

 if not equal, to the condor in size, and, like the 

 condor, haunts great mountain chains. As the 

 condor is the great vulture of the New World, 

 this vulture-eagle holds its throne on the lofty 

 precipices of the old continent. On the Swiss 

 and German Alps, from Piedmont to Dalmatia, 

 in the Pyrenees, in the mountains of Ghilan and 

 Siberia, of Egypt and Abyssinia, this, the largest 

 of the European birds of prey, is on the watch 

 to scourge the country. With more of the eagle 

 than the vulture in its composition, and with 

 claws more fit for rapine than the nails of the 

 condor, it generally seeks for a living prey, 

 and, soaring with its mate above the hills and 

 valleys, pounces upon the lambs and other quad- 

 rupeds. The stories of its having carried off 

 children in its crooked talons wear a much greater 

 air of probability than such tales when applied to 



* Gypaetus barbatus, Storr. 



the condor, with its comparatively impotent foot. 

 The strength of the lammergeyer and its con- 

 formation are quite equal to such murderous acts ; 

 for a full grown one is four feet from beak to tail, 

 and nine or ten in alar extent. But the lammer- 

 geyer contents itself with a dead prey when no 

 better may be had, and Bruce gives an anecdote 

 of its pertinacity and audacity on one of these 

 occasions so graphically, that it would be unjust to 

 the reader to give it in other than the slandered 

 Abyssinian traveller's own words : 



Upon the highest top of the mountain Lamalmon, 

 while the servants were refreshing themselves from 

 that toilsome, rugged ascent, and enjoying the 

 pleasure of a most delightful climate, eating their 

 dinner in the outer air, with several large dishes 

 of boiled goat's flesh before them, this enemy, as 

 he turned out to be to them, appeared suddenly. 

 He did not stoop rapidly from a height, but came 

 flying slowly along the ground, and sat down close 

 to the meat, within the ring the men had made 

 round it. A great shout, or rather cry of distress. 

 called me to the place. I saw the eagle stand for 

 a minute, as if to recollect himself, while the 

 servants ran for their lances and shields. I walked 

 up as near to him as I had time to do. His atten- 

 tion was fully fixed upon the flesh. I saw him put 

 his foot into the pan, where was a large piece in 

 water, prepared for boiling ; but finding the smart 

 which he had not expected, he withdrew it, and 

 forsook this piece which he held. 



There were two large pieces, a leg and a shoul- 

 der, lying upon a wooden platter ; into these he 

 trussed both his claws, and carried them off; but I 

 thought he looked wistfully at the large piece 

 which remained in the warm water. Away he 

 went slowly along the ground as he had come. 

 The face of the cliff over which criminals are 

 thrown took him from our sight. The Mahomet- 

 ans that drove the asses, who had suffered from the 

 hyaena, were much alarmed, and assured me of his 

 return. My servants, on the other hand, very 

 unwillingly expected him, and thought he had 

 already more than his share. 



As I had myself a desire of more intimate ac- 

 quaintance with him, I loaded a rifle gun with ball, 

 and sat down close to the platter by the meat. It 

 was not many minutes before he came, and a pro- 

 digious shout was raised by my attendants, " He 

 is coming! he is coming!" enough to have dis- 

 couraged a less courageous animal. Whether he 

 was not quite so hungry as at first, or suspected 

 something from my appearance, I know not, but he 

 made a small turn, and sat down about ten yards 

 from me, the pan with the meat being between me 

 and him. As the field was clear before me, and I 

 did not know but his next move might bring him 

 opposite to one of my people, and so that he might 

 actually get the rest of the meat and make off, I 

 shot him with the ball through the middle of his 

 body, about two laches below the wing, so that he 

 lay down upon the grass without a single flutter. 



Bruce gives the following dimensions of this 

 daring bird : 



From wing to wing he was eight feet four 

 inches ; from the tip of his tail to the point of his 

 beak, when dead, four feet seven inches ; he 

 weighed twenty-two pounds, and was very full of 

 flesh. 



