226 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



I came to a large stream and found a great boulder 

 a few yards inland which gave a sight of the shore 

 and of a glade at the forest's edge. Great orange 

 and black brassolid butterflies hovered about the 

 masses of morning-glories, hibiscus and clusia 

 blossoms near by, while my view seaward was 

 seamed by a hundred vertical lines of aerial rootlets, 

 dropping from fig-trees high above. 



A sharp cry drew my attention to a bird swing- 

 ing in a curve out from shore, sandpiper fashion, 

 and when it alighted I knew it for a wandering 

 tattler. Then a black spot on the sand exposed by 

 the ebbing tide turned out to be a grey Galapagos 

 gull, so interesting a straggler that I later secured 

 it. It was pecking at an old fish, and as I watched 

 I saw a small something run a few feet away. My 

 glasses showed a large rat — apparently of the usual 

 ship's kind — mangy to an unpleasant degree, much 

 of the hair being gone from its back. It was 

 munching a bit of old fish. Cocos was revealing 

 strange inhabitants with still more strange habits. 



Suddenly the island, and tree-ferns and tropical- 

 smelling jungle vanished in the haze of memory 

 which a happy, lilting little song aroused, and on a 

 branch a few feet away a yellow warbler sat and 

 sang to me over and over his simple lay, which so 

 often has meant early spring in my northern home. 

 This bird is the same as the Galapagos warbler. 



There are only four species of land birds on 

 Cocos and later in the morning, within a period of 

 fifteen minutes, I saw all of them without moving 

 from my boulder. A flash of rufous and a throaty 



