86 WILD WINGS 
morning, I was to enjoy and make the most of this remark¬ 
able spot. 
The hrst thing to do was to get settled in our strange 
quarters, which were in rather uncanny surroundings. Bird 
Kev has something of a history. Many years ago Audubon 
landed here and studied the great bird colony. During our 
Civil War the key was used as a Confederate prison-camp. 
It is perhaps an eighth of a mile long and about a hundred 
yards wide, a mere sand-bar, pretty well overgrown with bay 
cedar bushes from three to six feet high. There are also 
a few small cocoanut palms, some patches of Bermuda grass, 
and a species of cactus. Better than Key West does this 
island deserve that name, — a corruption from the Spanish, 
meaning Bone Key, — for it is a veritable graveyard, not 
only of soldiers, but of victims of the “ Yellow Jack.” The 
key was used for a yellow fever quarantine station during 
the period of the epidemic of 1899, the visible remains of 
which, beside the graves with their rude slabs, are several 
untenanted buildings, in which sulphur and carbolic acid 
are greatly in evidence. 
Bestowing our goods in an outer entry, utilizing a rusty 
stove in the cook-house, sleeping on a piazza, being careful 
to boil the water we used from the neglected cistern, we 
made ourselves comfortable, and found constant opportunity 
for bird-study by day and by night. Even from the windows 
and piazzas of the buildings we could watch the birds sitting 
on their nests or flying to and fro, and in every waking mo¬ 
ment listen to their cries. 
Under three species of birds are included all the regular 
inhabitants of Bird Key; in fact two kinds will embrace all 
but about two dozen individuals. These abounding sorts 
are the Noddy and the Sooty Tern, both being birds of the 
tropics, which are found nesting only at this one spot in all 
