BIRDS AND THEIR VOYAGES 89 



day I saw the birds returning east along the sky 

 highway they had travelled west. This return had 

 the same appearance as the journey out. It was 

 as if the travellers clearly saw their goal, with such 

 fixity of purpose, straightness, and sureness of aim 

 did they move through the sky. An express engine 

 does not move over the rails with more fixity and 

 decision than these bird hosts moved. It struck 

 me they must be dead-sure of their route, that they 

 could not miss the way or deviate a yard from it. 

 Consummate ease and sureness were here, and a set 

 purpose in every one of the travellers which only 

 death could interfere with. This was the impression 

 the whole migration made on me. How different 

 this concentration, this absence of indecision, from 

 the wavering of wood pigeons at roost time or lap- 

 wings in choosing a fallow to alight and feed in! 

 True, many redwings, fieldfares, and starlings would, 

 on their way back, drop out of their flocks or 

 scattered parties to alight on fields and sand dunes. 

 But presently they would rise to rejoin the con- 

 tinuous stream overhead, flowing always due west. 

 Water that has found its level would as soon deviate 

 from this level as the birds from their highway. 

 I never before got such a notion of the majesty, the 

 will of migration, of its rein and spur. 



No summoner, no avant-courier, no leader (in the 

 sense of authority), no follower (in the sense of sub- 

 mission to authority), no marshal, yet a marshalled 



