Sea Swallows 
affording excellent pasturage. After Penekese 
fell from its high estate of being a place for 
raising scientists, they put it to the next best 
use and went to raising sheep, of which about 
two hundred are scattered all over the island. 
The keeper says this number is too large, and 
that, to realize all the latent possibilities of a 
sheep, there ought to be only one to the acre. 
Next to the dignity of owning and handling 
a sail-boat yourself, is the lordliness of being 
the sole passenger and manager ex-officio. ‘The 
direct run to Penekese was fourteen miles; but 
it was so prolonged by head-winds, and finally 
by no wind at all, that I did not reach land 
until about the middle of the afternoon, and 
after a long risk of being stranded in the har- 
bor, through the skipper’s ignorance of the 
buoys. 
There is but a single dwelling on the island, 
occupied by a single man, who proved, how- 
ever, to be no small part of the island’s attrac- 
tiveness, and an interesting specimen of nature 
in the rough—a tall and vigorous old man, 
slightly bent, with grizzled beard and sunken 
cheek, sharp, kindly eyes, and a thin mist of 
white hair encircling the bald summit of his 
head, like a ring of vapor round a _ barren 
123 
