36 THE TURKEY BUZZARD, 
devour the hams of swine, and riot on pig’s liver, 
in such amazing secrecy and silence as not to be 
observed in the act by the lynx-eyed vultures 
above ? Were there no squabbles amongst the dogs 
for possession of the pig’s cheeks? no snarling for 
the flitch? no pulling the body this way, or that 
way? no displacing the materials with which the 
negroes had covered the hog? In a word, was 
there no. movement on the part of the dogs, by 
which the passing vultures might receive a hint 
that there was something in the ravine below “ cal- 
culated to glut their voracious appetite?” Fear, 
certainly, could not have kept them away; because 
the author tells us, in another part of his account, 
that he has seen vultures feeding at one extremity 
of a carcass, and dogs at another. 
This second experiment, like the story of the 
“bear and fiddle,” was broken off in the middle. 
The author tried to go near the carcass, but the 
smell was so insufferable that he abandoned it 
when he had got within thirty yards of it. He 
tells us, the remains were entirely destroyed, at 
last, through natural decay. How did he learn 
this? At the time that he abandoned the carcass 
to its fate, the insufferable smell clearly proved that 
there was plenty of carrion still on the bones; but, 
as the author’s own olfactory nerves prevented him 
from watching it any longer, I will take upon myself 
to make up the hiatus valde deflendus, which his sud- 
den retreat occasioned, by a conjecture of my own; 
namely, that the dogs and vultures, like the devil 
and the king, in “ Sir Balaam,” divided the prize. It 
