to secure in it our provisions for many months. There were several
bed-places level with the floor, which were rendered soft enough to
lie on, by being filled with the feathers of birds. Furniture there
was none, except two or three old axes, blunted with long use, a tin
pannikin, a mess kid and some rude vessels to hold water, cut out of
wood. On the summit of the island there was a forest of underwood,
and the bushes extended some distance down the ravines which led from
the summit to the shore. One of my most arduous tasks was to climb
these ravines and collect wood, but fortunately a fire was not often
required. The climate was warm all the year round, and there seldom
was a fall of rain; when it did fall, it was generally expended on
the summit of the island, and did not reach us. At a certain period
of the year, the birds came to the island in numberless quantities to
breed, and their chief resort was some tolerably level ground--
indeed, in many places, it was quite level with the accumulation of
guano--which ground was divided from the spot where our cabin was
built by a deep ravine. On this spot, which might perhaps contain
about twenty acres or more, the sea birds would sit upon their eggs,
not four inches apart from each other, and the whole surface of this
twenty acres would be completely covered with them. There they would
remain from the time of the laying of the eggs, until the young ones
were able to leave the nests and fly away with them. At the season
when the birds were on the island, all was gaiety, bustle, and noise,
but after their departure it was quiet and solitude. I used to long
for their arrival, and was delighted with the animation which
gladdened the island, the male birds diving in every direction after
fish, wheeling and soaring in the air, and uttering loud cries, which
were responded to by their mates on the nests.

But it was also our harvest time; we seldom touched the old birds,