ity of Damascus, in whose deep recesses he sought to
escape from the dangers that beset him in the neighborhood of man.
Here he sported among the flowers that nodded over the precipices
which border the little river Barady, as it plunges its way through
the gorges of the mountain.

"Here," thought he, "I shall surely be safe, since the foot of man can
never reach these inaccessible cliffs." Scarcely, however, had the
thought passed over his mind, when hearing a whistling noise in the
air, he cast his eyes fearfully upward and perceived a bird darting
toward him with such inconceivable swiftness, that he had scarcely
time to shelter himself from its talons by crouching into a hole in
the rock, where he remained throbbing with fear, not daring to look
out to see whether his enemy was still on the watch.

"There is no safety for me here," exclaimed Adakar, who at length
gathered sufficient courage to look out from his retreat, and seeing
the bird had disappeared, once more flitted away. He visited the
recesses of the forest, the cultivated plains, and the solitudes of
the desert, but wherever he went he found enemies watching to make him
their prey, and his life was only one long series of that persecution
which strength ever wages against unresisting weakness. "What,"
thought he, "is the use of my wings, since they only enable me to
encounter new dangers, and to what purpose do I sip the dews of the
opening flowers, when death is every moment staring me in the face,
and enemies beset me on every side? O, that I were a man again; I
would willingly resign the unbounded freedom I enjoy, for that slavery
which is accompanied by security."

Thus he continued to become every day more discontented with his lot,
until by degrees the autumn came, and the flowers withered and died.
The frosts, too, began to shed their hoary lustre over the green
fields that gradually changed their hue to that of melancholy brown,
and Adakar became pinched with both hunger and cold. The brilliant
colors of his body and wings faded, as if in sympathy with the waning
beauties of nature; his strength and activity yielded to the approach
of expiring weakness; he had provided neither food nor shelter against
the coming winter; and once more death stared him in the face with an
aspect more dreary and terrible than it had ever presented before. The
bare earth afforded no shelter, and the withered fields no food. "O,"
thought he, as he felt himself dying