once more emerge, struggling with his prey, and mounting in the air
with screams of exultation. These are the signals for our hero, who,
launching into the air, instantly gives chase, and soon gains on the
fish hawk; each exerts his utmost to mount above the other, displaying
in these rencontres the most elegant and sublime aerial evolutions.
The unencumbered eagle rapidly advances, and is just on the point of
reaching his opponent, when, with a sudden scream, probably of despair
and honest execration, the latter drops his fish; the eagle, poising
himself for a moment, as if to take a more certain aim, descends like
a whirlwind, snatches it in his grasp ere it reaches the water, and
bears his ill-gotten booty silently away to the woods.

These predatory attacks and defensive manoeuvres of the eagle and the
fish hawk, are matters of daily observation along the whole of our sea
board, from Georgia to New England, and frequently excite great
interest in the spectators. Sympathy, however, on this as on most
other occasions, generally sides with the honest and laborious
sufferer, in opposition to the attacks of power, injustice, and
rapacity, qualities for which our hero is so generally notorious, and
which, in his superior _man_, are certainly detestable. As for the
feelings of the poor fish, they seem altogether out of the question.

When driven, as he sometimes is, by the combined courage and
perseverance of the fish hawks from their neighbourhood, and forced to
hunt for himself, he retires more inland, in search of young pigs, of
which he destroys great numbers. In the lower parts of Virginia and
North Carolina, where the inhabitants raise vast herds of those
animals, complaints of this kind are very general against him. He also
destroys young lambs in the early part of spring; and will sometimes
attack old sickly sheep, aiming furiously at their eyes.