98 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 
ence between the azure tints of the sky, and the emerald hue 
of the bright foliage, I felt that an intimacy with them, not 
consisting of friendship merely, but bordering on phrenzy, 
must accompany my steps through life;—and now, more 
than ever, am I persuaded of the power of those early im- 
pressions. They laid such hold upon me, that, when removed 
from the woods, the prairies and the brooks, or shut up from 
the view of the wide Atlantic, I experienced none of those 
pleasures most congenial to my mind. None but aerial com- 
panions suited my fancy. No roof seemed so secure to me 
as that formed of the dense foliage under which the feathered 
tribes were seen to resort, or the caves and fissures of the 
massy rocks to which the dark-winged Cormorant and the 
Curlew retired to rest, or to protect themselves from the fury 
of the tempest. My father generally accompanied my steps, 
procured birds and flowers for me with great eagerness,— 
pointed out the elegant movements of the former, the beauty 
and softness of their plumage, the manifestations of their 
pleasure or sense of danger,—and the always perfect forms 
and splendid attire of the latter. My valued preceptor would 
then speak of the departure and return of birds with the 
seasons, would describe their haunts, and, more wonderful 
than all, their change of livery; thus exciting me to study 
them, and to raise my mind towards their great Creator. 
A vivid pleasure shone upon those days of my early youth, 
attended with a calmness of feeling, that seldom failed to 
rivet my attention for hours, whilst I gazed in ecstacy upon 
the pearly and shining eggs, as they lay imbedded in the 
softest down, or among dried leaves and twigs, or were ex- 
posed upon the burning sand or weather-beaten rock of our 
Atlantic shores. I was taught to look upon them as flowers 
yet in the bud. I watched their opening, to see how Nature 
had provided each different species with eyes, either open at 
birth, or closed for some time after ; to trace the slow progress 
vf the. young birds toward perfection, or admire the celerity 
