TAB. I. Represents the Indians in a canoe with a fire in the middle, attended by a boy and a girl. In one end is a net made of silk grass, which they use in fishing their weirs. Above is the shape of their weirs, and the manner of setting a weir wedge across the mouth of a creek.
NOTE. That in fishing their weirs they lay the side of the canoe to the cods of the weir, for the more convenient coming at them, and not with the end going into the cods, as is set down in the print: but we could not otherwise represent it here, lest we should have confounded the shape of the weir with the canoe.
In the air you see a fishing hawk flying away with a fish, and a bald eagle pursuing to take it from him; the bald eagle has always his head and tail white, and they carry such a lustre with them that the white thereof may be discerned as far as you can see the shape of the bird, and seems as if it were without feathers, and thence it has its name bald eagle.
§ 24. 'Tis a good diversion to observe, the manner of the fishing-hawk's preying upon fish, which may be seen every fair day all the summer long, and especially in a morning. At the first coming of the fish in the spring, these birds of prey are surprisingly eager. I believe, in the dead of winter, they fish farther off at sea, or remain among the craggy uninhabited islands upon the sea coast. I have often been pleasantly entertained by seeing these hawks take the fish out of the water, and as they were flying away with their quarry, the bald eagles take it from them again. I have often observed the first of these hover over the water and rest upon the wing some minutes together, without the least change of place, and then from a vast height dart directly into the water, and there plunge down for the space of half a minute or more, and at last bring up with him a fish which he could hardly rise with; then, having got upon the wing again, he would shake himself so powerfully that he threw the water like a mist about him; afterwards away he'd fly to the woods with his game, if he were not overlooked by the bald eagle and robbed by the way, which very frequently happens. For the bald eagle no sooner perceives a hawk that has taken his prey but he immediately pursues and strives to get above him in the air, which if he can once attain, the hawk for fear of being torn by him, lets the fish drop, and so by the loss of his dinner compounds for his own safety. The poor fish is no sooner loosed from the hawk's talons, but the eagle shoots himself with wonderful swiftness after it, and catches it in the air, leaving all further pursuit of the hawk, which has no other remedy but to go and fish for another.