THE GOLDEN EAGLE AND HIS EYRIE.

[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO THE WOOD-DRIFT.]


A somewhat tedious journey of thirty hours from Paris brought me one
fine afternoon in the early part of July to Kulstein, an ancient
fortress forming the frontier-town of the North Tyrol, toward Bavaria.
While occupied in passing my portmanteau through the prying and
unutterably dirty hands of the custom-house officials I was accosted by
a man dressed in the garb of a Tyrolese mountaineer--short leathern
breeches reaching to the knee, gray stockings, heavy hobnailed shoes, a
nondescript species of jacket of the roughest frieze, and a battered hat
adorned with two or three feathers of the capercailzie and a plume of
the royal eagle. Old Hansel was one of the gamekeepers on a large
imperial preserve close by, with whom some years previously I had on
more than one occasion shared a hard couch under the stunted pines when
inopportune night overtook us near the glaciers while in hot pursuit of
the chamois.

This unexpected meeting proved a source of the liveliest interest to me,
inasmuch as this old veteran of the mountains was on the point of
starting on an expedition of a somewhat remarkable character. A pair of
golden eagles, it appeared, had made a neighboring valley the scene of
their frequent ravages and depredations among the cattle and game, and
Hansel was about to organize an expedition to search for, and if
possible despoil, the eyrie. Of late years these birds have become very
rare. Switzerland is nearly, if not quite, cleared of them, while the