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Here is likewise pretty plenty of Wild Fowl, such as Shags, Ducks, Curlews, and a Black bird, about as big as a Crow, with a long, sharp bill of a Colour between Red and Yellow; we also saw fish in the River, but of what sort I know not.
Flocks of shags, or cormorants, also visited the bay at the same time.
The shags and soundings were our best pilots; for after we had stood a few miles to the north, we got out of soundings, and saw no more shags. The succeeding day and night we spent in making short boards; and at eight o'clock on the 24th, judging ourselves not far from the rocks by some straggling shags which came about us, we sounded in sixty fathoms water, the bottom stones and broken shells.
I promise to be here, and your father's daughter will not take advantage of my kindness." Reluctant as I was, I obeyed this man, and left him there, and went slowly to the house, walking as if in a troubled dream. Upon my return, I saw nothing for a time but fans and feathers of browning fern, dark shags of ling, and podded spurs of broom and furze, and wisps of grass.
It seemed as if they had entered into a league not to disturb each other's tranquillity. The greater part of the sea-coast is occupied by the sea-lions; the sea-bears take up their abode in the isle; the shags are posted in the highest cliffs; the penguins fix their quarters where there is the most easy communication to and from the sea; and the rest of the birds choose more retired places.
Others do their fishing seated on the water; for there are many different kinds of water-fowl here represented gulls, shags, cormorants, gannets, noddies, and petrels, with several species of Anativae, among them the beautiful black-necked swan. Nor are they all seabirds, or exclusively inhabitants of the water.
It may not be amiss to observe, that the shags are the same bird which Bougainville calls saw-bills; but he is mistaken in saying that the quebrantahuessas are their enemies; for this bird is of the peterel tribe, feeds wholly on fish, and is to be found in all the high southern latitudes. It is amazing to see how the different animals which inhabit this little spot are mutually reconciled.
The husband and wife were out on their verandah, enjoying the calm beauty of the night, and sentimentalizing, as newly-married couples will. Suddenly, from the river below them, rises the melancholy and discordant clamour of our performance. Quickly, the voices of the night awake in earnest protest against it. Roosting shags and waterfowl fly screaming away.
Here are, however, plenty of muscles, not very large, but well tasted; and very good celery is to be met with on several of the low islets, and where the natives have their habitations. The wild-fowl are geese, ducks, sea-pies, shags, and that kind of gull so often mentioned in this journal under the name of Port Egmont hen.
Water-fowls called Bhasas, ducks, Suparnas, Chakravakas, diving ducks, cranes, crows, shags, vultures, hawks, owls, as also all four-footed animals that are carnivorous and that have sharp and long teeth, and birds, and animals having two teeth and those having four teeth, as also the milk of the sheep, the she-ass, the she-camel, the newly-calved cow, woman and deer, should not be taken by a Brahmana.
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