Martinsburg Gazette And Public Advertiser

The Condor.—In the course of the day I had an opportunity of shooting a condor; it was so satiated with its repast on the carcass of a horse as to suffer me to approach within pistol shot before it extended its enormous wings to take flight, which was to me the signal to fire; and having loaded with an ample charge of bullets, my aim proved effectual and fatal. What a formidable monster did I behold in the ravine beneath me, screaming and flapping in the last convulsive struggles of life! It may be difficult to believe that the most gigantic animal which inhabits the earth or the ocean can be equal in size by a tenant of the air; and those persons who have never seen a larger bird than our mountain eagle, will probably read with astonishment of a species of that same bird, in the southern hemisphere, being so large and strong as to seize an ox with its talons, and to lift it into the air, whence it let it fall to the ground, in order to kill it and to prey upon its carcass. But this astonishment must in a great degree subside when the dimensions of the bird are taken into consideration, and which, incredible as they may appear, I now insert verbatim from a note taken down with my own hand. When the wings are spread they measure sixteen paces (forty feet) in extent, from point to point; the feathers are eight paces (twenty feet) in length, and the quill part two palms (eight inches) in circumference. It is said to have power sufficient to carry off a live rhinoceros.'—Sir Edmund Temple's Travels in Peru.