Vol. XXXIII 



1915 



Murphy, Birds of Fernando Noronha. 4d 



been felled in order that the exiled convicts, practically the only 

 human beings to share the sea-beaten spot with countless nesting 

 ocean birds, might not build rafts and escape to the shores of Brazil. 



When the Daisy had drawn within a couple of miles of the coast, 

 whaleboats were lowered, and I went ashore along with a fishing 

 party. On the way to the land we were surrounded by an enor- 

 mous flock of Noddy Terns which stretched away to the far horizon 

 until the birds appeared like tiny, swarming insects. Passing 

 several conical inaccessible islets, on which Man-o' -war-birds were 

 breeding, we entered a cove of grottoed rock ending in a crescent 

 of sand. Behind the beach the fissured, yellow wall of a cliff, 

 conforming with the semicircular outline of the cove, rose sheer to a 

 height of four or five hundred feet, and clustering in thousands 

 along its upper surface were graceful Noddies on their scaffold 

 nests. Side by side on a twisted bough at the foot of the cliff sat 

 two snow-white "Love Terns" (Gygis), antitheses of the black 

 Noddies. 



The cool water of the cove lured us to a swim, and, as several of 

 us plunged in, the blurred image of a green turtle glided away be- 

 fore us, and a shoal of porpoises see-sawed leisurely across the 

 inlet. One of the sailors fired his gun from the whale-boat at some- 

 thing or other (which he did not hit), and the roar reverberated 

 from face to face of the curving wall, while a horde of screaming 

 birds poured down off the rocks, adding to the bewildering echoes. 



Other inhabitants than the birds were also disturbed by the 

 report of the gun. When we turned toward the beach a tall, 

 black, muscular fisherman, with a tattered seine over one shoulder, 

 and wearing not a stitch of clothing, stood eyeing us curiously. 

 Presently out of the shrubbery below the cliff came a fellow of 

 lighter skin, clad in short canvas trousers and a blue tam-o'-shanter 

 cap, with a crude wicker basket slung over his back. The pair 

 might have passed for Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday on 

 washday. The cap of the second native came off obsequiously 

 when we landed, while both men extended a right hand of welcome 

 and ingenuously explained in Portuguese that they were murderers 

 serving sentences on the isle. The quadroon had been there 

 fourteen years, and his durance was to terminate at the close of 

 eight months more when he would return to his native Pernambuco. 



