60 AUDUBON THE NATURALIST. 
a range of high cliffs. Audubon felt assured, by 
certain indications, that the bird frequented that 
spot. Seated about a hundred yards from the 
foot of the rock, he eagerly awaited its appear- 
ance as it came to visit the nest with food for its 
young. He was warned of its approach by the 
loud hissing of the eaglets, which crawled to the 
extremity of the cavity to seize the prey—a fine 
fish, Presently the female, always the larger 
among rapacious birds, arrived, bearing also a 
fish, With more shrewd suspicion than her 
mate, glaring with her keen eye around, she at 
once perceived the nest had been discovered, 
Immediately dropping her prey, with a loud 
shriek she communicated the alarm, when both 
birds soaring aloft, kept up a growling to intim- 
idate the intruders from their suspected design. 
Not until two years later was Audubon grat- 
ified by the capture of this magnificent bird. 
Considered by him the noblest of its kind, he 
dignified it with the great name to which his 
country owed her salvation, and which must be 
imperishable therefore among her people. “Like 
the eagle,” he thought, ‘“ Washington was brave; 
like it, he was the terror of his foes, and his fame 
extending from pole to pole, resembled the ma- 
jestic soarings of the mightiest of the feathered 
tribe. America, proud of her Washington, has 
also reason to be so of her Great Eagle.” The 
