I assert, then, that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the bird
chiefly lurks the secret of the spell; a truth the more evinced in this,
that by a solecism of terms there are birds called grey albatrosses;
and these I have frequently seen, but never with such emotions as when I
beheld the Antarctic fowl.
But how had the mystic thing been caught? Whisper it not,
and I will tell; with a treacherous hook and line, as the fowl
floated on the sea. At last the Captain made a postman of it;
tying a lettered, leathern tally round its neck, with the ship's
time and place; and then letting it escape. But I doubt not,
that leathern tally, meant for man, was taken off in Heaven,
when the white fowl flew to join the wing-folding, the invoking,
and adoring cherubim!
Most famous in our Western annals and Indian traditions is that of
the White Steed of the Prairies; a magnificent milk-white charger,
large-eyed, small-headed, bluff-chested, and with the dignity
of a thousand monarchs in his lofty, overscorning carriage.
He was the elected Xerxes of vast herds of wild horses,
whose pastures in those days were only fenced by the Rocky Mountains
and the Alleghanies. At their flaming head he westward
trooped it like that chosen star which every evening leads
on the hosts of light.
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