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Masses of epiphytes grew both on the dead trees and the living; some had huge leaves like elephants' ears. Now and then fragrant scents were blown to us from flowers on the banks. There were not many birds, and for the most part the forest was silent; rarely we heard strange calls from the depths of the woods, or saw a cormorant or ibis. My canoe ran only a couple of hours.
Their bones are interred in the vaults of the cathedral, which, after coasting the barren rocks of Mull, buffeted by the waves, the traveller beholds rising out of the sea, "giving," as it is finely expressed, "to this desolate region an air of civilization, and recalling the consciousness of that human society which, presenting elsewhere no visible traces, seems to have abandoned these rocky shores to the cormorant and the gull."
"Oh, I am so hungry!" cried Cecil, in mournful tones. "You are a little cormorant: Grannie will give you nice tea when we get home. Put on your gloves, children, I shall go at once." "Do come back with us, auntie," implored the boys. "Grannie wants you ever so much." "Not more than I want her," returned Katherine. "How is she, Ada?" "Oh, very well; just the same as usual.
Detricand stirred him with his foot, as one might a pile of dirt. "Listen," said he. "In the Vier Marchi they're cutting off the ear of a man and nailing it to a post, because he ill-used a cow. What do you suppose they'd do to you, if I took you down there and told them it was through you Rullecour landed, and that you'd have seen them all murdered eh, maitre cormorant?"
And here, too, we found the nests of several large species egret, night-heron, cormorant, and occasionally a hawk birds which build on trees in forest districts, but here on the treeless region of the pampas they made their nests among the rushes.
Ah! well, I shrug my shoulders, and bidding both Cormorant and Critic to get behind me, Satan, I write my story in my own fashion for my gentle readers who are neither Cormorants nor Critics, and of whom I am sincerely fond.
I leave it to you, gentlemen, who have daughters of your own, with pets also, to picture to yourselves the agony of her mind in finding that her favourite had found its way down the throat of that great guzzling, gormandising, cockney cormorant; and then, forsooth, because he is fined for the outrageous trespass, he comes here as the injured party, and instructs his counsel to indulge in Billingsgate abuse that would disgrace the mouth of an Old Bailey practitioner!
With so many trumps in our hand we cannot possibly lose the game. The only thing to be regretted is that we shall have to get ashore again in Australia or New Zealand, instead of casting anchor at the Kerguelens, near the quay of Christmas Harbour, in front of the Greea Cormorant.”
The Cormorant is not a flier, but a swimmer and diver; he cannot "show off" in the air, and only uses his narrow wings to take him, as quickly as may be, from one fishing-place to another. Most of the Cormorant's time is spent in fishing, for he lives entirely on fish, and catches immense numbers of them. He spends many hours, too, in drying his wings.
The halcyon or kingfisher, the white-breasted water-ouzel, the skylark, the "ruddock" or robin-redbreast, the wren, the green plover, the woodcock these serve for some of his moods; but he mentions eagle, kite, hawk, buzzard, owl, falcon, cormorant, and a number of others, always with discretion and with the full measure of knowledge vouchsafed to his time.
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