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Updated: June 13, 2025
Sometimes, however, as in the tale of Hasan, the species is left undescribed. Among the Eskimo the heroine is vaguely referred to as a sea-fowl. The Kurds have a strange tale of a bird they call the Bird Simer. His daughter has been ensnared by a giant when she and three other birds were out flying; but she is at length rescued by two heroes, one of whom she weds.
From July to October the men get a great number of eaglet, penguin, and mollyhawk eggs all sea-fowl. Fish can be caught all the year round. Any groceries obtained must come from passing ships. Sometimes months go by without tea, coffee, sugar, flour, salt and soap being seen.
It is surprising to see with what fearless unconcern these savages venture in their light barks upon the roughest and most tempestuous seas. They seem to ride upon the waves like sea-fowl.
Then one saw admiringly that the simile "like a sea-fowl" was no metaphor, but exact. None were better qualified to pronounce than we, for the South Atlantic abounds in aquatic birds. We were followed continuously by clouds of them, low flying, skirting the water, of varied yet sober plumage.
The crags which rose between the beach and the mainland, to the height of two or three hundred feet, afforded in their crevices shelter for unnumbered sea-fowl, in situations seemingly secured by their dizzy height from the rapacity of man.
There are also a species of birds which burrow in the ground like rabbits, where they hatch their eggs, and rear their young: they are web-footed; which is rather extraordinary, and their bill is like that of other sea-fowl; but they have not the least fishy taste, and their flesh is very fine.
The 24th we went on shore, where we found no houses, and only saw four men who would not come near us. We found plenty of goats, but so wild that we could only take three or four of them; but we got plenty of fish, and great quantities of sea-fowl on a small isle close to the larger one.
He was somewhat larger than a pigeon, and was a very beautiful bird, though not so brilliantly coloured as several other species of sea-fowl. His plumage, soft and lustrous as satin, was of a delicate pearly grey, except the long middle-feathers of the tail, which were of a pale red, and projected full a foot and a half beyond the rest.
But the sun set over the sea behind us, the land in front grew dim, the moaning tide rose around the quaking rock and even the screaming sea-fowl deserted us, and still there was no sign of relief. My heart was quivering through my clothes by this time, but Martin, who had whistled and sung, began to talk about being hungry.
A strange confusion of indistinct and broken sounds, issuing from myriads of nests and perches all along the beach, showed that the various tribes of sea-fowl were beginning to bestir themselves.
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