120 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 
from elegant long-shank, down each naturalist’s gullets gra- 
ciously descended, with a gurgle, the mildest, the meckest, 
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 gayeties, 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, “we 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 oftener affronting 
