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The hearth is the chief refuge of the lone thinker; this was a cosy recess, deep cut in the mediæval stone and mortar; within which, on chilly days, a generous heap of sea-cast timber and dried turf shot forth dancing blue flames over a mound of white ash and glowing cinders; but which, in warmer times, when the casements were unlatched to let in with spring or summer breeze the cries of circling sea-fowls and the distant plash of billows, offered shelter to such green plants as the briny air would favour.
There were additions to the cone up to the year 1823, when it became so quiescent as to be the favorite haunt of seals and sea-fowls, and, when the weather was favorable, was visited by native egg-hunters from Unalaska. During the summer of 1883 Bogosloff was again seen in eruption, as it was thought.
Coming back by the sea-shore I saw many sorts of sea-fowls, which I did not understand; but was surprised and almost frighted with two or three seals, which, while I was gazing at, not well knowing what they were, got into the sea, and escaped me for that time. Nov. 6.
Coming back by the sea-shore, I saw many sorts of sea-fowls, which I did not understand; but was surprised, and almost frightened, with two or three seals, which, while I was gazing at, not well knowing what they were, got into the sea, and escaped me for that time.
The pintado-bird is as big as a duck; but appears, as it flies, about the bigness of a tame pigeon, having a short tail, but the wings very long, as most sea-fowls have; especially such as these that fly far from the shore, and seldom come nigh it; for their resting is sitting afloat upon the water; but they lay, I suppose, ashore.
From them are descended the ballocks of Lorraine, which never dwell in codpieces, but fall down to the bottom of the breeches. Others grew in the legs, and to see them you would have said they had been cranes, or the reddish-long-billed-storklike-scrank-legged sea-fowls called flamans, or else men walking upon stilts or scatches.
This, with drift-wood, serves for fuel, for the island is entirely destitute of trees. They make another heap of the flesh, which, with the eggs of sea-fowls, preserved in oil, an occasional sea-lion, a few ducks in winter, and some wild roots, compose their food. Mr. Hunt found several Russians at the island, and one hundred hunters, natives of Oonalaska, with their families.
The divers were in the midst of the lagoon upon their employment; the cook, a boy of ten, was over his pots in the camp. Thus were all souls accounted for except a single native who accompanied Donat into the wood in quest of sea-fowls' eggs. In a moment, out of the stillness, came the sound of the fall of a great tree. Donat would have passed on to find the cause.
My dog was a very pleasant and loving companion to me for no less than sixteen years of my time, and then died of mere old age; as for my cats, they multiplied, as I have observed, to that degree, that I was obliged to shoot several of them at first, to keep them from devouring me, and all I had; but at length, when the two old ones I brought with me were gone, and after some time continually driving them from me, and letting them have no provision with me, they all ran wild into the woods, except two or three favourites, which I kept tame, and whose young, when they had any, I always drowned, and these were part of my family: besides these, I always kept two or three household kids about me, which I taught to feed out of my hand; and I had also more parrots which talked pretty well, and would all call Robin Crusoe, but none like my first; nor, indeed, did I take the pains with any of them that I had done with him: I had also several tame sea-fowls, whose names I know not, which I caught upon the shore, and cut their wings; and the little stakes, which I had planted before my castle wall, being now grown up to a good thick grove, these fowls all lived among these low trees, and bred there, which was very agreeable to me; so that, as I said above, I began to be very well contented with the life I led, if it might but have been secured from the dread of savages.
I could always catch plenty of fish principally mullet; and as for sea-fowls, all that I had to do was walk over to that part of the island where they were feeding and breeding, and knock them over with a stick. I made dough-cakes from the flour whilst it lasted; and I had deputies to fish for me I mean the hundreds of pelicans.
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