File:Mountain adventures in various parts of the world (1876) (14758158826).jpg

Identifier: mountainadventur00head (find matches)
Title: Mountain adventures in various parts of the world
Year: 1876 (1870s)
Authors: Headley, Joel Tyler, 1813-1897
Subjects: Mountaineering
Publisher: New York, Scribner, Armstrong, and co.
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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ter especially, as the king ofbirds, by his solitary habits, and the immenseheights to which he soars alone, has gained an indi-yiduality that no other bird possesses. His startingplace is often from peaks, where the air is too rari-fied for any other animal to breathe, and soaringsublimely thence, he moves upward and upward,till he becomes a mere speck in the dark blue heavens.Until Humboldt, in a residence of seventeenmonths amid the native mountains of this bird,studied his habits and peculiarities, its name wassurrounded with a romance and mystery like thatonce attached to the ancient griffins and dragons.The exact truth, however, invests him with suffi-cient interest. He seems to scorn the earth, never 346 MOUNTAIN ADVENTURES. visiting it except to gratify his hunger. The rest ofthe time, a mere speck in the thin ether, or else lostto sight entirely, he sails all day above the regionof thunder clouds and storms, surveying with hispiercing eye the earth rolled out like a map below
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The Condors. him. Enjoying existence in an atmosphere too rarefor any creature but himself to breathe, and in atemperature in which neither man nor beast couldexist, he is surrounded with impenetrable mysterytill he descends to the earth for food. Such is hiskeenness of sight, that even from the lofty heights ANIMAL LIFE IN MOUNTAIN REGIONS. 347 at which he soars, he can detect the lifeless carcassof an ox, or the unsuspecting lamb on the plain be*low. This solitary bird then becomes gregarious,and quite a flock of them will gather togetheraround the putrefying body. But even in this filthyfeast they are dainty at the commencement. Firstthey pluck out the eyes and then the tongue as de-licate morsels, when they attack the bowels andflesh, and never leave off the ravenous repast tillthey are so gorged that it is with difficulty they canfly at all. In this helpless condition they are some-times attacked with clubs by the natives, and cap-tured. The condor is not, however, always content

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