AUDUBON AND BOONE. 185 



delight which it gave me. Not even Herschel, when he dis- 

 covered the planet which hears his name, could have expe- 

 rienced more rapturous feelings. We were on a trading 

 voyage, ascending the Upper Mississippi. The keen wintry 

 blasts whistled around us, and the cold from which I suffered 

 had, in a great degree, extinguished the deep interest which, 

 at other seasons, this magnificent river has been wont to 

 awake in me. I lay stretched beside our patroon. The 

 safety of the cargo was forgotten, and the only thing that 

 called my attention was the multitude of ducks, of different 

 species, accompanied by vast flocks of swans, which from time 

 to time passed us. My patroon, a Canadian, had been en- 

 gaged many years in the fur trade. He was a man of much 

 intelligence, and, perceiving that these birds had engaged my 

 curiosity, seemed anxious to find some new object to divert 

 me. An eagle flew over us. "How fortunate!" he ex- 

 claimed ; " this is what I could have wished. Look, sir ! the 

 Great Eagle, and the only one I have seen since I left the 

 lakes." I was instantly on my feet, and having observed it 

 attentively, concluded, as I lost it in the distance, that it was 

 a species quite new to me. My patroon assured me that such 

 birds were indeed rare; that they sometimes followed the 

 hunters, to feed on the entrails of animals which they had 

 killed, when the lakes were frozen over, but that when the 

 "lakes were open, they would dive in the daytime after fish, 

 and snatch them up in the manner of the Fishing Hawk; 

 and that they roosted generally on the shelves of the rocks, 

 where they built their nests, of which he had discovered 

 several by the quantity of white dung scattered below. 



Convinced that the bird was unknown to naturalists, I felt 

 particularly anxious to learn its habits, and to discover in 

 what particulars it differed from the rest of its genus. My 

 next meeting with this bird was a few years afterwards, whilst 

 engaged in collecting crayfish on one of those flats which 

 border and divide Green River, in Kentucky, near its June- 



