may be discovered.

Often in the Himalaya I have watched an eagle circling overhead. I
have sat on the mountain-side and watched it sail majestically along
in graceful curves and circles, and with perfect ease and poise. Far
above the earth it would range, and seemingly without exertion glide
easily over tracts that we poor men could only enter by prodigious
effort. Captivated by its grace of motion, and jealous of its freedom,
I would for hours watch it. And this eagle I knew, from the height
and distance from which it would swoop down on its prey, to be
possessed of eyesight of unrivalled keenness in addition to its
capacity for movement.

So this bird had opportunities such as no human being--not even an
airman--has of seeing the earth and what is on it. At will it could
glide over the loftiest mountain ranges. At will it could sail above
the loveliest valleys. At will it could perch upon any chosen point
and observe things at close range. In a single day this one eagle
might have seen the finest natural scenery in the world--the highest
mountain, the most varied forest, thickly populated plains and bare,
open plains, peoples, animals, birds, insects, trees, flowers, all of the
most varied description. In one day, and in the ordinary course of its
customary circlings and sailings, it might have seen what men come
from the ends of the Earth to view, and are content if they see only a
hundredth part of what the eagle sees every day.

From its mountain eerie in Upper Sikkim it might have seen the rose
of dawn flushing the snowy summits of Kinchinjunga, and far away
Mount Everest. And soaring aloft, the eagle might have looked out
over the populous plains of India and seen, like silver streaks, the
rivers flowing down from the Himalaya to join in the far distance
the mighty Mother Ganges. Then its eye might have ranged over the
vast forest which clothes in dense green mantle the plain at the foot
of the mountains from Nepal to Bhutan and Assam, and from the
plain spreads up on the mountain-sides themselves and reaches to
the very borders of eternal snow. Over this vast forest with its
treasures of tree and plant, animal and insect life, tropical, temperate,
and alpine, the eagle might have soared; and then, passing over the
Himalayan watershed, have looked down upon the treeless, open,
undulating, almost uninhabited plain of Tibet, and in the distance
seen the great Brahmaputra River, which, circling round Bhutan,
c