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Next morning I received a letter from Miguel Diaz Gonzale, the owner of the ship, insisting pitifully on his poverty and distress, having a large family to provide for, and promising to meet me at Hilo or Quaco, to treat for a ransom. We soon after took a small bark of ten tons, laden with guana, or cormorants dung, and having also some dried fish, which lay within a mile of Arica.
If therefore, any one among you feels that for reasons he need not state, he has no right to accept his share of Anthony Westonhaugh's bounty, then that person is requested to withdraw before this letter to his heirs is read." Withdraw? Was the man a fool? Withdraw? these cormorants! these suckers of blood! these harpies and vultures!
On coming up, we found that the ship was already taken, and the Mercury only accidentally adrift. This prize was called the Rosario, of 100 tons, laden with cormorants dung, which they use for manuring the land which produces the cod-pepper, or Capsicum, from the cultivation of which they make a vast profit in the vale of Arica.
Where they had all hidden themselves during the storm, he could not imagine, but there seemed to be as many of them as ever, and they were all quite happy and quarrelsome, except the cormorants, who were so ravenous that they could not spare a moment from their diving and gobbling, even to quarrel with their neighbours.
Now we began to see the breeding places of the water-birds of which we had heard. There was a confusion of bird calls, sand-hill cranes were everywhere; in some cases with five stick-built nests in a single water-killed tree. A blue heron flopped around as though it had broken a wing, to decoy us from its nest. The snowy white pelican waddled along the banks and mingled with the cormorants.
Curlews, ptarmigans, cormorants, and ospreys are also seen in greater or less numbers. The steamer lands us for a few hours at Tromsöe, a small island in latitude 69° 38´ north, a thriving place of six thousand inhabitants, a goodly number for a town within the Arctic Circle. It is the capital of Norwegian Lapland. Both to the north and south of the town snow-clad mountains shut off distant views.
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.
Notwithstanding the general distress, rents in New York City were greater than were paid in any other city or village upon the globe. Ibid., 1812:134. Ibid., 1812:259-260. Frequently, in those days, the giving of presents was a part of corrupt methods. The cormorants could never be gorged.
As to their Trade, they have, of late Years, lost some of the most advantageous Parts of it to the Cormorants, which perhaps might be brought about by several that were Cormorants by Birth, who found Means of working themselves into the Management of their publick Affairs.
"They must be, I suspect, from your account of them, Walter, cormorants, or rather that species of them known as the frigate-bird." No one is so eager as a naturalist when in search of a specimen, and we soon saw that Mr Sedgwick would be far more pleased if we took him round to the cliff, than should we catch a boat-load of fish.
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