EAGLES AND AET. 
271 
with bright unflinching eye, after thus breathing that deadly 
gas for hours ! And now let us add, from the same source, 
another sketch, that of the Old Eagle, illustrating this same 
point. 
"It is supposed that Eagles live to a very great age, — 
some persons have ventured to say even a hundred years. 
On this subject, I can only observe, that I once found one 
of these birds, which, on being killed, proved to be a female, 
and which, judging by its appearance, must have been very 
old. Its tail and wing-feathers were so worn out, and of 
such a rusty color, that I imagined the bird had lost the 
power of moulting. The legs and feet were covered with 
large warts, the claws and bill were much blunted, it could 
scarcely fly more than a hundred yards at a time, and this it 
did with a heaviness and unsteadiness of motion such as I 
never witnessed in any other bird of the species. The body 
was poor and very tough. The eye was the only part which 
appeared to have sustained no injury. It remained spark- 
ling and full of animation, and even after death seemed to 
have lost little of its lustre. No wounds were perceivable 
on its body." 
Think of the gem-like glittering of that tameless glance 
beneath the deepening shadows of the gathered years ! — it 
seems as if the glorious bird would die into a diamond to 
shine on, night-piercing and defiant there forever ! — as if the 
light of that fierce life the storms have fed, would remain a 
thing imperishable within that eyelet-hole, although the skull 
should fall away to dust — the bloody beak leave but a hooked 
line where it went out — and plumes that have been rufiled by 
the thunder, float away impalpable upon a breath of air ! 
What changes has not that century-piercing vision wit- 
nessed? The young Eagle, in its brown plumage, sailed 
above silent Avoods, along the valleys of our great rivers in 
the West, and there was nothing to make it afraid in the 
shades beneath, except the whistling arrow of the Eed-man, 
when it passed above his wigwam, or rustled, brushing by 
