672 A. K Verrill—The Bermuda Islands. 



and the silly wilcle birds comming so tame into my cabbin and goe so 

 familiarly betweene my feet, and round about the cabbin, and into 

 the fire, with a strange lamentable noyse, as though they did bemoan 

 us, and bid us to take, kill, roast, and eate them : I was much amazed, 

 and at length said within myselfe, surely the tameness of these wilde 

 birds, and their offring of themselves to be taken, is a manifest token 

 of the goodnesse of God even of his love, his care, his mercy and 

 power working together, to save this people from starving. Mr. 

 Moore, then Governour, fearing that their overeating themselves 

 would be their destruction, did remove them from thence to Port 

 Royoll, where they found but little or no want ; for birds they had 

 there also, brought to them every weeke, from the Hands adjoyning, 

 whither some were sent of purpose to bird for them." 



That Mr. Hughes referred mainly to the cahow, though he did 

 not mention the name of the "silly birds," may be properly inferred, 

 because of the season, "beginning of the newe yeare," when the 

 large party of starving settlers was sent there for food, for the egg- 

 birds did not arrive until the first of May. This famine with the 

 sending of a large number of starving persons to feed on the defence- 

 less birds at their breeding season, was unquestionably the direct 

 and principal cause of their very rapid extermination, for it was 

 during the next year (1616) that the first law was passed, " but 

 overlate," restricting the "spoyle and havock of the cahowes." 

 Capt. John Smith's account of this event is as follows : 

 "Thus famine and misery caused Governour More leave alibis 

 workes, and send them abroad to get what they could ; one hundred 

 and fifty of the most weake and sicke he sent to Coupers Isle, where 

 were such infinite numbers of the Birds called Cahowes, which were 

 so fearlesse they might take so many as they would." 



These accounts of the habits of the cahow would not, in the least, 

 apply to the shearwater. It is probable that another nocturnal bird 

 called " Pimlico " by the early settlers was the shearwater ; the 

 latter is still called "pimlico" by the native fishermen. (See below.) 

 Although it was very unfortunate that Governor Moore was 

 obliged to place those famished people on Cooper's Island during the 

 breeding season of the birds, it is evident that he had no other 

 resource. No other food could be had, at that season, to keep the 

 people from sheer starvation. How long they remained there is 

 uncertain, but it was long enough to exterminate nearly all the 

 breeding birds. They may, perhaps, have remained till the egg-birds 

 arrived in spring, and thus helped to exterminate these birds also. 



