?20. WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



from elegant long-shank, down each naturalist's gullets gra- 

 ciously descended, with a gurgle, the mildest, the meekest, 

 the very Moses of Ales. 



Audubon, ere half an hour had elapsed, found an oppor- 

 tunity of telling us that he had never seen us in a higher state 

 of preservation and in a low voice whispered something about 

 the eagle renewing his youth. We acknowledged the kind- 

 ness by a remark on bold bright birds of passage that find the 

 seasons obedient to their will, and wing their way through 

 worlds still rejoicing in the perfect year. But too true 

 friends were we not to be sincere in all we seriously said ; and 

 while Audubon confessed that he saw rather more plainly 

 than when we parted the crowfeet in the corners of our eyes, 

 we did not deny that we saw in him an image of the Falco 

 Leucocephalus, for that, looking on his " carum caput," it 

 answered his own description of that handsome and powerful 

 bird, viz : " the general color of the plumage above is dull 

 hair-brown, the lower parts being deeply brown, broadly 

 margined with greyish white." But here he corrected us ; 

 for "Surely my dear friend," quoth he, "you must admit I 

 am a living specimen of the Adult Bird, and you remember 

 my description of him in my First Volume." And thus 

 blending our gravities and our gayetics, we sat facing one 

 another, each with his last oyster on the prong of his trident, 

 which disappeared, like all mortal joys, between a smile and 

 a sigh. 



How similar in much our dispositions yet in almost all 

 how dissimilar our lives ! Since last we parted, " AVC scarcely 

 heard of half a mile from home" he tanned by the suns and 

 beaten by the storms of many latitudes we like a ship laid 

 up in ordinary, or anchored close in shore within the same 

 sheltering bay with sails unfurled and flags flying but for 

 sake of show on some holiday he like a ship that every 

 morning has been dashing through a new world of waves 

 often close-reefed or under bare poles but oftcner affronting 



