Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 7, 2025
Quantities of whale birds about the ship, the first fulmars and the first McCormick skua seen. Last night saw 'hour glass' dolphins about. Sooty and black-browed albatrosses continue, with Cape chickens. The cold makes people hungry and one gets just a tremor on seeing the marvellous disappearance of consumables when our twenty-four young appetites have to be appeased.
"He sees over the land with a glance, like my parrots, and over the sea with sharp sight, like my albatrosses. He knows where my brother, the King of the Rain, has gone. For me, who am the least among all the gods, I sit here on my perch and blink like a crow. I do not know these things. They are too high and too deep for me." Tu-Kila-Kila did not like the turn the conversation was taking.
Sailors have no "ancient mariner" sentiment as to killing the albatross in fact, it would be misplaced. The captain told us of a case he knew of where a man had fallen overboard, when the albatrosses swooped down upon him, and pecked out his eyes and brains. The sailors begged the captain to shoot him and so end his sufferings.
On the 19th at noon by my account we were within twenty leagues of Port Desire; but the wind blowing fresh from the north-west with thick foggy weather I did not attempt to make the land. We passed a good deal of rock-weed and saw many whales, and albatrosses and other seabirds. Thursday 20. On the 20th at noon our latitude was 50 degrees 24 minutes south and longitude 65 degrees 50 minutes west.
Outward bound, and off the pitch of Cape Horn, he used to sit on the taffrail, and keep the steward loading three or four old fowling pieces, with which he would bring down albatrosses, Cape pigeons, jays, petrels, and divers other marine fowl, who followed chattering in our wake.
I could not wait for that. Out beyond soundings the big seas were racing westward and calling me, albatrosses hovered motionless, expectant of a comrade, and a thousand islands held each of them a fresh adventure, stored up, hidden away, awaiting production, expressly saved for me.
They followed us several thousand miles, and were hooked for their pains. The albatrosses did not come within hail. The little Maltese goat gave a pint of milk night and morning, and was a great comfort to the cow. She did not like the land or the grass at first, and is to be thrown out of milk now. She is much admired and petted by the young Africander.
He was like a strange bird, like an albatross blown into unaccustomed seas, alighting upon an island where albatrosses were unknown. He found his office as bright and attractive as urgently and sternly directed servitude could make it. There were no letters upon his desk, however, the desk so overburdened in the past. The desk spoke of loneliness.
There we found the nests of albatrosses, and, much to our delight, the nests contained young birds. The fledgelings were fat and lusty, and we had no hesitation about deciding that they were destined to die at an early age. Our most pressing anxiety at this stage was a shortage of fuel for the cooker.
"The sailors say, however, that it is very unlucky to kill an albatross," observed Peter. "They fancy that the souls of people who die at sea fly about in the bodies of albatrosses, I suppose, or something of that sort I am not quite certain; and for my part I wish that Ensign Holt had been less free with his rifle.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking