OCR Text |
Show GUNNISON'S ISLAND- GULLS AND PELICANS. 179 distance- fifteen, seventeen, and twenty feet; and ten feet, within a hundred and fifty feet of the shore. There are two islands here, one of them quite small, and lying within one hundred yards to the northward of the larger one, of which it has at one time formed a part. We landed at the head of a beautiful little sandy bay, on the eastern side, which has its counterpart on the western, the two being separated by a low, narrow neck of land, forming a delightful little nook, and separating the lofty pile of rock forming the northern part of the island from the rocky cliffs which extend to its southern extremity. The whole neck and the shores on both of the little bays were occupied by immense flocks of pelicans and gulls, disturbed now for the first time, probably, by the intrusion of man. They literally darkened the air as they rose upon the wing, and, hovering over our heads, caused the surrounding rocks to re- echo with their discordant screams. The ground was thickly strewn with their nests, of which there* must have been some thousands. Numerous young, unfledged pelicans, were found in the nests on the ground, and hundreds half- grown, huddled together in groups near the water, while the old ones retired to a long line of sand- beach on the southern side of the bay, where they stood drawn up, like Prussian soldiers, in ranks three or four deep, for hours together, apparently without motion. A full- grown one was surprised and captured by the men, just as he was rising from the ground, and hurried in triumph to the beach. He was very indignant at the unceremonious manner in which he was treated, and snapped furiously with his long bill to the right and left at everybody that came near him. On the top of his bill, about midway of its length, was a projection about an inch long and half an inch high, resembling the old- fashioned sight of a rifle: in the female this is wanting. We collected as many eggs as we could carry. That of the gull is of the size of a hen's egg, brown and spotted; that of the pelican is white, and about as large as a goose egg. The white of the latter, when cooked, is translucent, and resembles clear blanc- mange. After much searching, we found among the scanty drift- wood along the beach, two indifferent sticks with which to build a station. We set them up on the highest peak of the island, at its northern extremity, where a nearly perpendicular cliff of dark- gray limestone rises from the water to the height of five hundred feet. It was a work of great fatigue to transport these heavy timbers |