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, as
they were not in flesh, but as soon as the young ones were within a few
days of leaving the nests, we were then busy enough. In spite of the
screaming and the flapping of their wings in our faces, and the darting
their beaks at our eyes, of the old birds, as we robbed them of their
progeny, we collected hundreds every day, and bore as heavy a load as we
could carry across the ravine to the platform in front of our cabin,
where we busied ourselves in skinning them, splitting them, and hanging
them out to dry in the sun. The air of the island was so pure that no
putrefaction ever took place, and during the last fortnight of the birds
coming on the island, we had collected a sufficiency for our support
until their return on th