204 MEDITERRANEAN NOTES 



2 p.m., and on getting within a few miles saw several 

 small whales spouting and blowing all around us. We 

 anchored on the south side of the island about 5.45 p.m., 

 in eight fathoms sand and weed, and Ruiz, T., and I 

 went off to a landing-place just below the lighthouse, 

 speaking two of the inhabitants on our way, fishing, or 

 rather setting a trot. One of these men told us that 

 there were no birds but gulls (of which we could see 

 a good many), and only one kind, now laying. 



" The island is, I should say, rather more than half 

 a mile long, and apparently only some few hundred yards 

 across. It is all low cliff, some fifty feet high, of a 

 yellowish sandstone, with here and there big stones 

 imbedded therein, and with many caves and fissures and 

 flat reefs lying off it. The lighthouse stands close to the 

 western end of the island. Several of the natives, or 

 rather inhabitants of the lighthouse, came down to speak 

 to us, and told us the lighthouse has only been built 

 three years ; that there were four families, no spring of 

 water, only one sort of gull (of which they had eggs), 

 no rock doves, many seals, and sometimes a good many 

 birds of passage, quails, turtle-doves, hoopoes, and larks.. 

 T. and Ruiz landed to explore whilst I cruised round in 

 the cutter. I saw herring and lesser black-backed gulls, 

 and fancied that I made out Audouin's gull by its great 

 length of wing, but I did not get a shot. Saw one 

 turnstone, two or three common sandpipers and whimbrel, 

 two or three redshanks and tv/o stilts, evidently on migra- 



