HUNTING THE SEA OTTER. 69 



of a mile more or less, the country was broken up into 

 mounds and hillocks. The bight of the bay was entirely 

 composed of sand backed with sand dunes, now white with 

 snow, which shielded with protecting care the scanty 

 growth around ; the extremities were rocky and boulder- 

 strewn, the east one terminating in a huge unwooded 

 volcanic mountain, the west one stretching out into a spit 

 of raised level ground, like an artificial embankment, 

 terminating in a reef with several kelp beds around it. 

 After breakfast, all hands went ashore to get wood and 

 water, both of which were much needed on board. We 

 hauled the boats up on a little peebly patch, between two 

 small streams that came down murmuring and sparkling, 

 and not far from two substantial wooden houses, the only 

 habitations on the eastern side of the island, one evidently 

 used as a store, the other occupied by a Japanese and two 

 or three Einos ; the former told us that they lived for the 

 greater part of the year in the small fishing colony on the 

 west coast, only coming across occasionally to fish during 

 the summer. I had taken my gun, and shot a yellow 

 shanks, but there was little life to be seen. Two large 

 eagles hovering over the scene only added to the desola- 

 tion, and a few crows, like black dots upon the snow, 

 could be distinguished above watermark, feeding upon 

 some garbage of the sea ; a single red-breasted thrush, 

 looking like an overgrown robin, sat sulky and disconsolate 

 on an alder branch behind the houses, and two pretty 

 white-breasted birds, harbingers of spring, sang sweetly, 

 but plaintively, from the wood hard by. 



On our return, we boarded the Flying Mist, whose crew, 

 similarly employed, had been working all the morning 

 alongside of ours. We found the ship to be a regular 

 Newfoundland Banker of sixty tons, fore and aft rigged, 

 with large mainsail, the boom running twenty-five feet 

 over the counter, deep and sharp as a yacht, with beautiful 

 lines ; no better craft could be chosen for cruising in a 

 deep and sudden-storm-swept sea, in which ability to 



