Vol 'i9i5 XI1 ] Murphy, Birds of Trinidad Islet. 339 



marked graves on the northern side of the valley. The highest 

 point of Trinidad, 2020 feet on the Admiralty chart but 3000 

 according to the 'South Atlantic Pilot,' is near the center of the 

 island. The summits of the ridges are more than serrate, being a 

 succession of needle -like pinnacles. At the western end of the 

 island stands one of the most remarkable rock structures in the 

 world, the Ninepin of Halley, known also as the Monument, and 

 the Priest, a cylindrical tower of dark gray stone, doubtless a 

 phonolitic dike, rising from the ocean to a height of nearly nine 

 hundred feet. In common with all the bare steeps of this isle, the 

 surface of the Ninepin is pitted and undercut into designs like 

 arabesques. In outline and proportion the great column may be 

 compared with the two distal phalanges of a man's index finger. 

 Leaning slightly less than the Tower of Pisa, planned on the grand- 

 est scale of Nature's architecture, its utterly inaccessible wall 

 furnishes nesting chambers for tens of thousands of feathered 

 sprites, which sit within their niches like saints about a cathedral 

 spire. No sight had ever seemed so impressive as I gazed from the 

 small boat straight upward to the Ninepin's lofty summit, envel- 

 oped in a cloud of midge-like birds. 



Since landing was out of the question, we began fishing with 

 considerable success off the West Point, just outside the line of 

 breaking sea. The bottom was very rocky, varying in depth from 

 three to seven fathoms. Many of the captured bottom fishes were 

 brilliantly colored. The largest species, excepting sharks, was a 

 red-spotted garupa (Epinephalusf), in several instances over four 

 feet long and weighing fifty or sixty pounds. Several kinds of 

 trigger-fish (Balistida?) proved abundant. Here, as at Fernando 

 Noronha, we lost many of our prizes because of sharks, the lines 

 often coming inboard with nothing but fishes' heads on the hooks. 

 Even one of our largest garupas was nipped in half. We succeeded 

 in hooking and harpooning a number of cat sharks (Ginglymostoma) , 

 the ugly mouths of which harbored curious, extensible leeches. 

 Larger sharks were about the brig all day, and a Booby which was 

 shot and wounded so that it fell into the water, first had its legs 

 bitten off, and was then devoured as one morsel. At the surface 

 of the sea near shore were schools of needle-gars (Hemirhamphus). 

 The mandible of this small fish is long, resembling the beak of a 



