Perhaps the falconry surpassed the pack; for the master of the castle, by paying great sums of money, had secured Caucasian hawks, Babylonian sakers, German gerfalcons, and pilgrim falcons captured on the cliffs edging the cold seas, in distant lands.

My new gerfalcon, from beyond the sea?

In cases of great conscience, the messenger has a gerfalcon badge, formerly mentioned, and is so equipped, that he will ride 200, or 250 miles in a day and night, being attended in dark nights by persons who run along with him on foot, carrying lights.

In St Olave's church at Drontheim, they saw the skin of a white bear, which was fourteen feet and a half long; and they observed other birds, such as gerfalcons, goss-hawks, and several other kinds of hawks, to be much whiter than in other places, on account of the coldness of the country.

All birds of prey, when used for sport, received the generic name of falcon; and amongst them were to be found the gerfalcon, the saker-hawk, the lanner, the merlin, and the sparrow-hawk.

Oiseaux de poing, or hand-birds, was the name given to the gosshawk, common hawk, the gerfalcon, and the merlin, because they returned to the hand of their master after having pursued game.

He always had a hand as true as steel, and an eye like a gerfalcon.

For as Mr. Madden explains, not only does the true falcon, be she peregrine, gerfalcon, merlin, or hobby, differ in size and structure of wing and beak from the short-winged hawks, but she also differs in her method of hunting and seizing her prey.

"Far in the Northern Land, By the wild Baltic's strand, I, with my childish hand, Tamed the gerfalcon; And, with my skates fast-bound, Skimmed the half-frozen Sound, That the poor whimpering hound Trembled to walk on.

[Footnote 4: A gerfalcon is a large falcon of Northern Europe.

Water and forage were not to be had; the men suffered intolerably from thirst; horses died by hundreds; at the head of their troops marched knights mounted on asses or oxen; their favorite amusement, the chase, became impossible for them; for their hawking-birds toothe falcons and gerfalcons they had brought with themlanguished and died beneath the excessive heat.

"Particularly in the most poetical passages you are excellent; as, for instance, in the fine description of the gerfalcon and the heron in 'El Mayor Encanto'.11 Jor. "Your previous volumes I have long possessed and highly prized; and I hope you mean to add more and more, so as to make the translation as nearly complete as a single life will permit.