Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/490

Rh would not fight a dunghill cock in the same cage. No, perhaps he cannot fight in a cage; such a bird as this was not built to fight in a cage. But whoever thinks the bald eagle a coward had better see one die. At the last moment of life, at least, no nation need ever seek for mightier dignity or courage than his. Woe be to that power that ever meets the look of a nation preparing for the death-grip as we beheld that of this majestic bird.

He was awfully solemn and stern, even as he lay dead in the canoe. I never saw a head, human or animal, with such tremendous lines. The long, curved bone of the skull over the deep-set eye gave an expression of profound suffering and power. In one view he seemed to be very old and gray, and reminded one of the loneliness and kingliness of Lear; but the general suggestion, not of the beak, but of the side brow and sunken eye, was of the head of Daniel Webster.

We hung him on a stump till morning, till we could send him by canal to Suffolk to have his skin preserved. He was, as all great birds and beasts are said to be, covered with foul parasites, that must have made his life a torment, and that probably deepened the patient and enduring lines of his head. These vile things hurried from the dead king they had feasted on while his blood was