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When they had ceased firing there were thirty live horses, two dead ones, and thirty-two dead Spaniards. This was pretty good shooting, wasn't it?" Many heroic deeds were done in the Battle of Las Guasimas, by the "Regulars" as well as by the "Hough Eiders." Suffering was bravely borne. Sixteen of our men were killed, and more than fifty wounded.
And I would ask you to remember what seabird conservation means down there. It means fresh food, the only kind the people ever get, apart from fish. It means new business, if the eiders are once made safe in sanctuaries; for we now import our eider down from points outside of Canada.
A schooner captain says, "Now, boys, here's your butcher shop: help yourselves!" and this, remember, is in the brooding season. Not long ago the men from a vessel in Cross harbour landed on an islet full of eiders and killed every single brooding mother. Such men have grown up to this, and there is that amount of excuse for them. Besides, they ate the birds, though they destroyed the broods.
And after a while the birds began to gather at Allfowlsness, in thousands and tens of thousands, blackening all the air; swans and brant geese, harlequins and eiders, harolds and garganeys, smews and goosanders, divers and loons, grebes and dovekies, auks and razor-bills, gannets and petrels, skuas and terns, with gulls beyond all naming or numbering; and they paddled and washed and splashed and combed and brushed themselves on the sand, till the shore was white with feathers; and they quacked and clucked and gabbled and chattered and screamed and whooped as they talked over matters with their friends, and settled where they were to go and breed that summer, till you might have heard them ten miles off; and lucky it was for them that there was no one to hear them but the old keeper, who lived all alone upon the Ness, in a turf hut thatched with heather and fringed round with great stones slung across the roof by bent-ropes, lest the winter gales should blow the hut right away.
Among those able to hold their own, with proper encouragement, are the following: two loons, two murres, the puffin, guillemot, razor-billed auk, dovekie and pomarine jæger; six gulls ivory, kittiwake, glaucous, great black-back, herring and Bonaparte; two terns arctic and common; the fulmar, two shearwaters, two cormorants, the red-breasted merganser and the gannet; seven ducks the black, golden-eye, old squaw and harlequin, with the American, king and Greenland eiders; three scoters; four geese snow, blue, brant and Canada; two phalaropes, several sandpipers, with the Hudsonian godwit and both yellowlegs; two snipes; five plovers; and the Eskimo and Hudsonian curlews.
Now the eiders of the Jews, and Hyrcanus with them, went in unto the queen, and desired that she would give them her sentiments about the present posture of affairs, for that Aristobulus was in effect lord of almost all the kingdom, by possessing of so many strong holds, and that it was absurd for them to take any counsel by themselves, how ill soever she were, whilst she was alive, and that the danger would be upon them in no long time.
And truly it had been a good time for the wolf cubs, as for most wild animals; and they had grown large and strong with their fat feeding, and wise with their many experiences. The ducks and geese vanished, driving southward ahead of the fierce autumn gales, and only the late broods of hardy eiders were left for a little season.
They were there by the hundreds, scattered along the lonely bays just above high-water line, where the eiders had their nests. At first old mother wolf showed them where to look, and when she had found a clutch of eggs would divide them fairly, keeping the hungry cubs in order at a little distance and bringing each one his share, which he ate without interference.
In the fighting at San Juan a Spanish shell two and a half inches in diameter burst in the midst of Captain Puritier's Battery K of the First artillery, wounding several. Among those injured was. Private Samuel Barr. Eoosevelt's Rough Eiders were also in this fight and bore themselves with as much credit as in the battle of last Friday in the bush. Several of the Rough Riders were wounded.
Those who lived with them in constant intercourse never saw them show a sign of anger or impatience; they were constantly beneficent and gentle, full of courtesy and loving-kindness; their marriage was the harmony of two souls indissolubly united. Two eiders winging the same flight, the sound in the echo, the thought in the word, these, perhaps, are true images of their union.