120 THE VAST. 



Desmarctais improves upon this ; stretches the expan- 

 sion of the wings to eighteen feet ; a width so enormous 

 that, as he says, the bird can never enter the forest ; and 

 he declares that a single one will attack a man, and 

 carry off a stag. 



A modern traveller, however, soars far beyond these 

 puny flights of imagination, and gravely gives forty feet 

 as the measurement, carefully noted, as he informs us, 

 " with his own Jiand,'' from the actual specimen. It is 

 only charitable to conclude that he really measured sixteen 

 feet, and that he either wrote " spaces " by mistake, or, 

 which is most likely, wrote simply " 16," translating it 

 afterwards when he compared his notes with what others 

 had said before him. Here, however, is the veracious 

 description, which the reader will see does not lack 

 romance in its embellishment. 



" It was so satiated with its repast on the carcass of a 

 horse, as to suffer me to approach within pistol-shot 

 before it extended its enormous wings to take flight, 

 which was to me the signal to fire ; and having loaded 

 with an ample charge of pellets, my aim proved effectual 

 and fatal. What a formidable monster did I behold, 

 screaming and flapping in the last convulsive struggle of 

 life ! It may be difficult to believe that the most gigantic 

 animal which inhabits the earth or the ocean, can be 

 equalled in size by a tenant of the air ; and those persons 

 who have never seen a larger bird than our mountain 

 eagle, will probably read with astonishment of a species 

 of that same bird, in the southern hemisphere, being so 



