14 AT EAGLE LAKE. 



stuff my birds, and, consequently, to get hold of them 

 without injuring their form or plumage. I succeeded 

 beyond all expectation ; and see," said my interlocutor, 

 throwing open the door of his dining-room, " here are 

 the two feathered murderers of the Mississippi, stuffed 

 and prepared by one of our most skilful naturalists." 



I could not but admire the beauty of these two speci- 

 mens of the great species of eagles, vulgarly called, in the 

 United States, the Bald-headed Eagle, although the head 

 is garnished with feathers ; white, it is true, which, at si 

 certain distance, gives it the appearance of baldness. I 

 had never seen such enormous wings. From tip to tip 

 they measured, when expanded, upwards of eight feet. 



The first time I myself came in sight of one of these 

 North American lammergeiers was on the border of Eagle 

 Lake, in Adirondack County, at the foot of the Catskill 

 Mountains, in the State of New York. Let my readers 

 figure to themselves a sheet of water three times as broad 

 as the Lake of Enghien, and as round as a crown-piece, 

 encircled by precipitous rocks, and bearing a close re- 

 semblance to a funnel about two-thirds full of water. On 

 one of the wave-washed rocks had nourished for cen- 

 turies, to judge from its girth, a venerable oak, whose 

 roots had obtruded themselves into every fissure and 

 cavity, whose bark had flowed like lava over the wall of 

 stone, where it adhered as if it had been rivetted with 

 iron bands. This oak was some ninety feet high, and 

 planted on the very edge of the abyss. 



I found myself in this romantic scene one morning, 

 with a celebrated English hunter, an enthusiast, named 

 Whitehead, who, probably as a satirical antithesis to his 



