Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 404, June, 1849

NORTH

Now I do. I see his eyes – for he came – he comes sughing close by me – and there he shoots up in terror a thousand feet into the sky.

BULLER

I did not know the Bird was so timid —

NORTH

He is not timid – he is bold; but an Eagle does not like to come all at once within ten yards of an unexpected man – any more than you would like suddenly to face a ghost.

BULLER

What brought him there?

NORTH

Wings nine feet wide.

BULLER

Has he no sense of smell?

NORTH

What do you mean, sir?

BULLER

No offence.

NORTH

He has. But we have not always all our senses about us, Buller, nor our wits either – he had been somewhat scared, a league up Glen Etive, by the Huntsman of Gleno – the scent of powder was in his nostrils; but fury follows fear, and in a minute I heard his bark again – as now I hear it – on the highway to Benlura.

BULLER

He must have had enormous talons.

NORTH

My hand is none of the smallest —

BULLER

God bless you, my dear sir, – give me a grasp.

NORTH

There.

BULLER

Oh! thumbikins!

NORTH

And one of his son's talons – whom I shot – was twice the length of mine; his yellow knobby loof at least as broad – and his leg like my wrist. He killed a man. Knocked him down a precipice, like a cannon-ball. He had the credit of it all over the country – but I believe his wife did the business, for she was half-again as big as himself; and no devil like a she-devil fighting for her imp.

BULLER

Did you ever rob an Eyrie, sir?

NORTH

Did you over rob a Lion's den? No, no, Buller. I never – except on duty – placed my life in danger. I have been in many dangerous-looking places among the Mountains, but a cautious activity ruled all my movements – I scanned my cliff before I scaled him – and as for jumping chasms – though I had a spring in me – I looked imaginatively down the abyss, and then sensibly turned its flank where it leaned on the greensward, and the liberated streamlet might be forded, without swimming, by the silly sheep.

BULLER

And are all those stories lies?

NORTH

All. I have sometimes swam a loch or a river in my clothes – but never except when they lay in my way, or when I was on an angling excursion – and what danger could there possibly be in doing that?

BULLER

You might have taken the Cramp, Sir.

NORTH

And the Cramp might have taken me – but neither of us ever did – and a man, with a short neck or a long one, might as well shun the streets in perpetual fear of apoplexy, as a good swimmer evade water in dread of being drowned. As for swimming in my clothes – had I left them on the hither, how should I have looked on the thither side?

BULLER

No man, in such circumstances, could, with any satisfaction to himself, have pursued his journey, even through the most lonesome places.

BULLER

Describe the view from the summit.

NORTH

I have no descriptive power – but, even though I had, I know better than that. Why, between Cruachan and Buchail-Etive lie hundreds on hundreds of mountains of the first, second, and third order – and, for a while at first, your eyes are so bewildered that you cannot see any one in particular; yet, in your astonishment, have a strange vision of them all – and might think they were interchanging places, shouldering one another off into altering shapes in the uncertain region, did not the awful stillness assure you that there they had all stood in their places since the Creation, and would stand till the day of doom.

BULLER

You have no descriptive power!