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Philippa is a cousin of Belle-bouche; and Belle-bouche is the niece of Aunt Wimple, who is mistress of the Shadynook domain. Philippa has guardians, but it cannot be said they direct her movements. They have given up that task in despair, some years since, and only hope that from the numerous cormorants always hovering around her, she may select one not wholly insatiable with some craw of mercy.
Their home is a camp; when they move it moves with them; their food is on the hoof and accompanies them on the march; they can go hungry for a week and then eat like cormorants; their tools are weapons, always in hand, always ready to use; a dozen times they have burst like a devouring torrent from their desert and overwhelmed the South and West.
Although practically no vegetable life has been found in these regions, an abundance of animal life exists in or contiguous to the sea, dependent on shrimps, fish, and such other life as the sea affords. Seals, penguins, petrels, cormorants, and gulls are found in considerable numbers. In fact, no persons tarrying in these regions need starve for lack of food, such as it is.
The piano is for the town, here we only want to enjoy the harmonious music of nature, the sea that croons or roars, the wind that whistles, whistles or scolds, the plaint of the sea-gulls in the storm, the cry of the frightened gulls and cormorants, the clicking of the pebbles rolled over by the waves; all these charm me strangely and I often sleep on the little beach, soothed by these melodies which you will find echoed in the themes of our great masters."
I joined him, and together we followed the crowd to the river, where we roosted like cormorants on adjacent piles overlooking a patch of clear water among the filled booms. "Drive's just over," my new friend informed me. "Rear come down last night. Fourther July celebration. This little town will scratch fer th' tall timber along about midnight when the boys goes in to take her apart."
But Amaro Delano, who called in 1803, makes no mention of the Portuguese; and when, in 1822, Commodore Owen visited Trinidad, he found nothing living there save cormorants, petrels, gannets, man-of-war birds, and "turtles weighing from five hundred to seven hundred pounds."
And find, moreover, the cause sufficient to palliate, to some extent at least, the woefulness of her cowardice. But at this point her meditation suffered interruption. The three cormorants, having finished their sun-bath, rose from the sand and flapped off, flying low and sullenly in single file over the sea parallel with the eastward-trending coast-line.
We pulled back to the schooner, on our way collecting, off a bank, a number of fine oysters, very superior to those which the 'coons are addicted to eating. At length a light breeze sprang up, sufficient to carry us at a slow rate down the sound. We passed vast numbers of the Florida cormorants a small species, which breeds in the mangrove islets.
I have a bottle of madeira or port every night, and pints of beer or claret. I am a creature of low habits, a man sodden with self-indulgence. And when I am in drink, no slaver can be more cruel and ruthless. Yet I am moderate in eating. The meals that people devour here almost revolt me. They eat like cormorants and drink like dry ground; but at my table I am careful, save with the bottle.
Otters, cormorants, nets, baskets and hooks without bait, all meet with due measure of success, but by far the most remarkable manner of fishing was that which I saw from the bows of a steamer made fast to the hulk at Hankow. It was mid-winter and bitterly cold, the ground being covered with almost a foot of snow.
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