's side-saddle, were attached.
The creature that was to carry my unusual weight was the most powerful
of all, but I felt some doubt whether even his strength might not
break down. One of the hunters had charge of a carriage on which was
fixed a cage containing two dozen birds of a dark greenish grey, about
the size of a crow, and with the slender form, piercing eyes, and
powerful beak of the falcon. They were not intended, however, to
strike the prey, but simply to do the part of dogs in tracing out the
game, and driving it from the woods into the open ground. Our birds,
rising at once into the air, carried us some fifty feet above the tops
of the trees. Here the chief huntsman took the guidance of the party,
keeping in front of the line in which we were ranged, and watching
through a pair of what might be called spectacles, save that a very
short tube with double lenses was substituted for the single glass,
the movement of the hawks, which had been released in the wood below
us. These at first dispersed in every direction, extending at
intervals from end to end of a line some three miles in length, and
moving slowly forwards, followed by the hunters. A sharp call from one
bird on the left gathered the rest around him, and in a few moments
the rustling and rushing of an invisible flock through the glades of
the forest apprised us that we had started, though we could not see,
the prey. Ergimo, who kept close beside me, and who had often
witnessed the sport before, kept me informed of what was proceeding
underneath us, of which I could see but little. Glimpses here and
there showed that we were pursuing a numerous flock of large
white-plumed or white-haired creatures, standing at most some four
feet in height; but what they were, even whether birds or quadrupeds,
their movements left me in absolute uncertainty. Worried and
frightened by the falcons, which, however, never ventured to close
upon them, they were gradually driven in the direction intended by the
huntsman towards the open plain, which bordered the forest at a
distance of about six miles to the northward. In half-an-hour after
the "find," the leader of the flock broke out of the wood two or three
hundred yards ahead of us, and was closely followed by his companions.
I then recognised in the objects of the chase the strange _thernee_
described by Eveena, whose long soft down furnished the cloak she wore
on our visit to the Astronaut. Their general form, and espec