AUDUBON — THE HUNTER-NATURALIST. 105 



far wildernesses, made liis appearance among the learned 

 circles of the Scottish Capital. He carried a portfolio under 

 his arm, and came, too, on an adventure to this seat of the 

 mind's royalty and of voluptuous wealth. There was a look 

 of nature's children ahout him. His curled and shining hair, 

 thrown back from his open front, fell in dark clusters down 

 his broad shoulders. Those bold features, moulded after 



" The high, old Roman fashion" — 



those sharp, steady eyes, that straight figure and elastic 

 tread, were a strange blending of the Red man and the pure- 

 blooded noble. A curious trader he ! But, when his won- 

 drous wares were all unfolded and spread out before their 

 eyes, what a delicious thrilling of amazement and delight 

 was felt through those fastidious circles '! A gorgeous show ! 

 The heart of a virgin world unfolded — teeming with rare and 

 exquisite thoughts — that had been born in the deep solitudes 

 of her young musings, and thus caught by this weird en- 

 chanter's pencil, as they gleamed past in all the bright hues 

 and airy graces of their fresh fleeting lives — with flower and 

 tree, and rock and wave, as beautiful and new as they, thrown 

 in to make the fairy pageant real ! It was a surprising reve- 

 lation, and when they knew that it had all been the work — 

 the obscure, unaided work, through years of enduring toil — of 

 that young wanderer, they were filled with overwhelming admi- 

 ration. They loaded him with adulation and with honors; 

 they took him by the hand generously, and led him up to his 

 success. 



Such was the efiiect of Audubon's appearance in Edinburgh. 

 In that glorious portfolio men felt that a great creation lay 

 folded ; in that modest backwoodsman they saw the first of the 

 Hunter-Naturalists — ^in the simple grandeur of that presence 

 they recognized the type of those masterful spirits of the race 

 of the olden time, the stories of whose deeds are the histories of 

 ages. They were awed, they loved him — they nourished and 



