TWO DIANAS IN ALASKA 249 



ashes set around and over it. The poor murderer 

 had not tasted bread since he fled up here, a month 

 ago. He had mixed up flour with water, and cooked 

 it over the fire. My bread was to him what a lump 

 of cake would have been to me. 



Below the Druidic cottage, on a rock platform, 

 guarded on all sides by forbidding precipices, a 

 pair of golden eagles had an eyrie. The friendly 

 murderer told me of it, thinking I might like to see 

 it. He called the eagle residence " a nest." Some- 

 how it seems to me that such a word, the simplicity 

 of which strikes home to all of us, is out of place 

 in connection with the egg-home of the King and 

 Queen of the air. Eyrie is much higher sounding, 

 therefore more suitable. Nest is almost Use majeste. 

 A King would be out of place in a nest. He might 

 possibly condescend to inhabit an eyrie. Then 

 there's the old world meaning to add lustre to the 

 word. Eyrie came, I think, from the Saxon " eghe," 

 with the g sounded like y. Modern English would 

 get that to eggery, and old English would make it 

 eyrie. Chaucer, too, wrote of egg as " ey." 



Leaning over the edge of the cliff, with my oblig- 

 ing friend the murderer hanging on to my coat with 

 a good firm grip, I could see the great heap of nest, 

 four feet or more across, and with my glasses two 

 young birds, fully plumaged, sitting dolorously in- 

 side. A second family, perhaps. I don't know. 

 But it was late in the season for young birds to keep 

 to their breeding place, unless indeed the youthful 

 eagles go on using the eyrie until they are quite 



