51 
to carry any article of food in their bill; those substances, 
indeed, from which they derive the chief part of their susten- 
ance, the blubber of dead whales, seals, and sea-lions, would 
melt away if caried in the bill to any distance. We could 
not help admiring the utter unconsciousness of danger dis- 
played by them at our approach; they never showed the least 
disposition to move out of our way; even when kicked or 
pulled off their nests they made not the smallest show of resist- 
ance, but quietly returned to their post, or stood still until we 
passed on. "Their plumage is in the finest order, copious, and 
without the least stain. They find great difficulty in getting 
on wing, and must run 20 or 30 yards along the ground with 
expanded wings before they can get fairly under weigh. We 
had the curiosity to take one of them by the point of its wings 
and fling it over the rock, yet though it had several hundred 
feet of clear fall it never recovered itself, but dropped down 
like a stone. On this account, when not engaged with their 
young, they usually rest upon the edge of the precipice, from 
which they can launch at once into the air: and on entering 
again upon that difficult part of our route, we had to kick up- 
wards of a dozen of them to the right and left of us before we 
could get on. We arrived at the cantonment about sunset, 
after a most fatiguing journey of 14 hours. - 
* In viewing the general structure of the island, and com- 
paring its diminutive size with the great number of spiracles 
crowning its summit, and which must all have been at one 
time or another in a state of activity, there can remain little 
doubt that the whole of it is of igneous origin. "The solid 
foundation on which it stands is undoubtedly lava. "The plat- 
form which forms the plain is also a sheet of lava, and though 
the face of it at one part breaks into prismatic columns, after 
the manner of basalt, yet the bed of semivitrified rock on 
which it rests seems to leave no room for doubt with regard 
to its origin. An entire hill, 700 or 800 feet high, near the - 
centre of the plain, is composed of nothing but stratified tufa. 
The plain is encumbered with large detached masses of por- 
phyritic stone, and with others enclosing crystals of sulphur or 
of augite, which seem to have been ejected in — present 
E2 
