Characteristics of the Black Bear..... Changes its Haunts with the Seasons.. Houses itself in Hollow Trees. Appearance of the Fore-paw when Cooked.... The Black Bear a Swift Runner.. Sudden Appearance and Disappearance of a Bear..... 287 Nocturnal Summons to a Bear Hunt.... Catches Fish on the coast of Labrador. AUDUBON THE NATURALIST IN THE NEW WORLD. CHAPTER I. A RARE combination of beauty with gran deur characterizes the aspects of Creation in the New World. Varied as they are, yet ever peculiarly rich and often sublime, it would seem indeed as though nature had designed to cast this her favoured land in a fresh mould of marvellous beauty. Widely differing in its features, the American territory, from the charm of its contrasted scenes offers equal attractions to the most antagonistic lovers of the beautiful. There are vast forests, roofed with dense foliage, the lofty stems in their delicious retreats, interlaced with numberless vines, or gaily crowned with perfumed flower garlands. Brilliant blossoms of every hue and odour mingle their loveliness with the stuartia's snowy purity, the majestic form of the magnolia, or richly scented clustering orange, irradiating with golden light the dark verdure of gardens and groves. Birds of splendid plumage and graceful flight congregate in multitudes, telling their aerial passage by the wondrous melody of their song. • Tempting fruits and berries, ripened by genial warmth and brushed by gentlest breeze—all these are elements of many a sunny scene, which breaks like a gladdening land of promise on the gaze of a loiterer, midst the western woods. Alternating with the pathless intricacies of the wilderness are vast untrodden prairies. Over these some hermit wanderer might roam, following only the track of the Indian, undisturbed for miles by human sight or sound, greeted now and then but by the buzzing wings of the beetle -a prey for the night hawk, whose skimming undulations are seen around, or by the more unwelcome howling of distant wolves. To those delighting in the freedom of the waters, how inviting the waves of the imperial Mississippi and Ohio! Pursuing the gracefully winding course of these rivers, from which verdurous islands rise, glistening in the light, like emeralds gemming a breast of snow, some Crusoe-minded mariner too, might contentedly once ASPECTS OF THE NEW WORLD. 3 have wandered. In sight of lofty hills, bordered by forests, he would have heard only the bells of the cattle, pasturing in the valleys beyond, the horn of the boatman, or the hooting of the owl. Or, to adventurous spirits, yet more tempting perhaps might seem those sterile wilds—the homes of the Esquimaux. Upon their rugged shores vast tracts of snow dappled country are seen clad with stunted vegetation of firs or tangled creeping pines. Innumerable beds of richly tinted mosses relieve the desolation of huge mountain ridges, and the barren aspect of these wastes. Far above the boisterous waves of the St. Lawrence, towers a line of crag and cliff, like a granite bulwark of the waters. From its summit open all around, in gorgeous array, fertile valleys, thickets clothed with green, and glassy lakes, over which hover birds of varied wing, and banks of snow backed by mountains, mingling their gray tints with those of the cold northern sky. On the numerous low islands dotting the western coast of these regions, are multitudes of cormorants and other aquatic wanderers, their sable wings sailing with astonishing rapidity over the waters, or spread to seek their nests among cliffs washed by the surge. But whether on northern or southern soil, |