EXPEDITION TO THE MISSOURI 257 



his choice of a berth in Audubon's favor, he observed 

 that "the green bale stirred a little, half turned upon 

 its narrow resting place, and after a while sat erect, and 

 showed us, to our no small surprise, that a man was 

 inside of it. A patriarchal beard fell white and wavy 

 down his breast ; a pair of hawk-like eyes glanced sharply 

 out of a fuzzy shroud of cap and collar." When this 

 stranger, drawn by a sense of irrepressible curiosity, had 

 ventured near enough to recognize the "noble Roman 

 countenance" thus obscured, he saw that it was Audu- 

 bon in his wilderness dress ; he was "hale and erect, with 

 sixty winters upon his shoulders, and like one of his old 

 eagles, feathered to the heel." Audubon's conversa- 

 tion, said this writer, was impulsive and fragmentary, 

 but he showed him with pleasure some of his original 

 drawings of animals, as well as a living collection of 

 foxes, badgers and Rocky Mountain deer, which he was 

 bringing home. 



To follow this narrator further: 



The confinement we were subjected to on board the canal- 

 boat was very tiresome to his habits of freedom. We used to 

 get ashore and walk for hours along the tow-path ahead of the 

 boat; and I observed with astonishment that, though over 

 sixty, he could walk us down with ease. . . . His physical 

 energies seemed to be entirely unimpaired. . . . Another strik- 

 ing evidence of this he gave us. A number of us were stand- 

 ing grouped around him on the top of the boat, one clear sun- 

 shiny morning; we were at the time passing through a broken 

 and very picturesque region ; his keen eyes, with an abstracted, 

 intense expression, peculiar to them, were glancing over the 

 scenery we were gliding through, when suddenly he pointed with 

 his finger towards the fence of a field, about two hundred yards 

 off. "See! Yonder is a Fox Squirrel, running along the top 

 rail. It is not often I have seen them in Pennsylvania." Now 



