CHAPTER IV 



ALBATROSSES 



The first time I ever saw an albatross was at 

 dawn far out in the Indian Ocean. It was that 

 hour at sea when perspective does not exist, and, 

 like the houses of a tropical coastal city, everything 

 appears flat and on one plane. I was observing a 

 small flock of petrels from the rail of my vessel 

 when a lighter colored bird appeared above them, 

 apparently of the same size. As I watched, it grew 

 larger and larger, until, to my amazement, it joined 

 the petrels, and in the same instant they were 

 dwarfed to insect size while this white bird assumed 

 relatively gigantic proportions, and I knew that I 

 was seeing the effortless flight of an albatross. 



For years thereafter my eyes were always on the 

 lookout for these birds. In southern seas and in 

 the north Pacific one may hope to find them, but 

 not on our own boreal Atlantic. A great many 

 years ago, however, long before man began to have 

 sufficient perspective of his ancestry to worry 

 about it, albatrosses were calmly winging their way 

 over our northern seas, and we find their fossil 

 bones both in England and America. A vast 

 amount has been written about their flight but to- 

 ss 



