lains, and lived for months in the
tents of the fierce Sioux. He spent a season in the winter camp of
the Shawnees, sleeping, wrapped in a buffalo robe, before the great
camp-fire, and living upon wild turkey, bear's grease, and opossums.
He made studies of deer, bears, and cougars, as well as of wild
turkeys, prairie hens, and other birds. For days he drifted down the
Ohio in a flat-bottomed boat, searching the uninhabited shores for
specimens, and living the life of the frontiersman whose daily food
must be supplied by his own exertions. Sometimes his studies would
take him far into the dense forests of the West, where the white man
had never before trod, and the only thing that suggested humanity
would be the smoke rising miles away from the evening camp-fire of
some Indian hunter as lonely as himself.

Once as he lay stretched on the deck of a small vessel ascending the
Mississippi he caught sight of a great eagle circling about his head.
Convinced that it was a new species, he waited patiently for two years
before he again had a glimpse of it, flying, in lazy freedom, above
some butting crags where its young were nested. Climbing to the place,
and watching like an Indian in ambush until it dropped to its nest,
Audubon found it to be a sea-eagle. He named it the Washington Sea
Eagle, in honor of George Washington. Waiting two years longer, he was
able to obtain a specimen, from which he made the picture given in his
work. This is but one example of the tireless patience with which he
prosecuted his studies, years of waiting counting as nothing if he
could but gain his end.

Some of his discoveries in this kingdom of the birds he relates with a
romantic enthusiasm. Throughout the entire work there runs the note
of warmest sympathy with the lives of these creatures of the air and
sunshine. He tells us of their hopes and loves and interests, from the
time of the nest-making till the young have flown away. The freedom of
bird life, its happiness, its experiences, and tragedies appeal to him
as do those of humanity. The discovery of a new species is reported as
rapturously as the news of a new star. Once in Labrador, when he was
making studies of the eggers, his son brought to him a great hawk
captured on the precipice far above his head. To Audubon's delight, it
was that rare specimen, the gerfalcon, which had heretofore eluded all
efforts of naturalists. While the rain dripped down from the rigging
above, Audubon sat