272 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 
his still form, watching with sinew-stmng bow amidst path- 
less solitudes. When it had donned the blanched insignia 
of Eagle-hood, and on steadier wings with swifter rushing 
flight, spread its white tail and threw its white head far back 
to utter resounding war-cries, then, with a shock, upsprung 
in answer, the sharp ring of the rifle, and the hissing bullet 
told that a more fearful foe had come ! And now it became 
miore wary and learned to fear for its wild empire ; for from 
afar the gradual hum of an approaching civilization swelled 
upon the ancient silence, until the belching roar of a Steam- 
boat roused the startled echoes to reverberate on distant hills 
as it passed up the quiet-gliding river ! Then in fire, in 
thunder, and in smoke, the mysterious and terrible Advent 
was announced to all the creatures of a wilderness which 
was henceforth to own a new dominion, and with sullen 
flappings the Eagle passed away towards the West, above 
falling forests and uprising cities, to find the unviolated 
solitudes. 
There again the same sights and sounds would follow it 
apace, until at last the Steam Horse, snorting flames, came 
tearing through the bowels of the old solemn hills, to fill the 
wide valleys beyond with the iron clangor of its hurtling 
speed, and then the astounded guardian of Earth's Primeval 
sleep whirled away on hurried wings, deeper yet deeper to- 
wards the West ! Still the inexorable pursuers came upon 
its track, and still it passed on before, in shortening flights^ 
until at last its earliest foe no longer answered with the war- 
whoop to its scream, and the forests seemed oppressed with 
the silence of a pause, as if it but awaited, breathlessly, the 
terrible coming ! 
And here the swift-winged bird first felt that it was weary ! 
The steel-hinged pinions that had " sheared the subtile ayre" 
so long, seemed to have lost their free, triumphing spring, 
and it went heavily upon its way. Kow its savage pride 
becomes reconciled in a degree to the tumults and strange 
sounds from which it fled at first in fiercest wrath, because 
