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You can't conceive what a lot of spiders there are in the world, all sorts and sizes. They are divided into hunters, wanderers, weavers, and swimmers. I expect you'll see some queer ones, if you go to hot places. And oh, Jack! talking of burrows, of course you're in Nova Scotia, and that's where Cape Sable is, where the stormy petrels make their houses in the sand.
Chiloe General Aspect Boat Excursion Native Indians Castro Tame Fox Ascend San Pedro Chonos Archipelago Peninsula of Tres Montes Granitic Range Boat-wrecked Sailors Low's Harbour Wild Potato Formation of Peat Myopotamus, Otter and Mice Cheucau and Barking-bird Opetiorhynchus Singular Character of Ornithology Petrels. NOVEMBER 10th.
The birds which William referred to were the stormy petrels. "Were you ever shipwrecked on a desolate island like Robinson Crusoe?" "Yes, Master William, I have been shipwrecked; but I never heard of Robinson Crusoe.
Hence it will cause him no surprise that there should be geese and frigate-birds with webbed feet, either living on the dry land or most rarely alighting on the water; that there should be long-toed corncrakes living in meadows instead of in swamps; that there should be woodpeckers where not a tree grows; that there should be diving thrushes, and petrels with the habits of auks.
Some were shearwaters; some petrels; and there were several sorts of large fowls. We saw of these birds, especially pintado-birds, all the sea over from about 200 leagues distant from the coast of Brazil to within much the same distance of New Holland. The pintado is a southern bird, and of that temperate zone; for I never saw of them much to the northward of 30 degrees south.
The land-pirates of the desert, those stormy petrels whose lives only differed from those of the followers of Kheyr-ed-Din in that they carried on their depredations on the land instead of on the sea, camped in their thousands in the environs of Tunis and boasted of the deeds which they were about to perform. Kheyr-ed-Din stimulated their enthusiasm with presents of the most costly description.
A few ice-floes drifted by us, occasionally peopled, as tourists throng a pleasure yacht, by penguins, and also by dusky seals, lying flat upon the white surfaces like enormous leeches. Above this strange flotilla we traced the incessant flight of petrels, pigeons, black puffins, divers, grebe, sterns, cormorants, and the sooty-black albatross of the high latitudes.
The silence of space was broken only by the clangour of the sea-birds, which came in muffled croaking tones through the stifling atmosphere of vapour. Petrels and albatross swept the top of the iceberg, where they kept a useless watch in their flight.
Early in February the voyagers, whose progress had been slow, found themselves in a veritable sea of "Pancake ice." Everywhere in a monotonous waste the vast white field seemed to stretch, with only a few albatrosses and petrels dotting its lonely surface. The thermometer dropped to ten below zero, and the boys found the snug warmth of the steam-heated cabins very desirable.
During the following days the Forward gained the north-west with rapidity; the wind veered round south, and the sea had a tremendous swell on; the brig was then going along under full sail. Some petrels and puffins came sailing over the poop; the doctor skilfully shot one of the latter, and it fell, fortunately, on the deck. The harpooner, Simpson, picked it up and brought it to its owner.
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