Our First Sight of the Seychelles Bird Island. 211 



ahead ; but as we soon found out with our glasses, all that was 

 really visible above the horizon was a big tree, which by an 

 optical delusion appeared to be of a prodigious size, and on 

 account of the absence of the usual appearance of land was 

 thought by some of us to be only a sail. We were at this time 

 about ten miles to the north-east of Bird Island, the most 

 northerly of the Seychelle Group. About mid-day we anchored 

 in seven fathoms off the western end of the island, some dozen 

 or so large gannets coming off to meet us, and hovering inqui- 

 sitively about the ship. 



Soon after, a party of officers, including myself, proceeded 

 to land. On touching the beach we were met by a pair of 

 negroes, who, we learned, formed the entire human population of 

 the island. They occupied some wretched huts which had been 

 hitherto screened from our view by a dense thicket of bushes, 

 which forms a fringe around the margin of the island, and gives 

 it, from the anchorage, the delusive appearance of being well 

 wooded. 



Their occupation consisted in catching and drying fish, and in 

 salting, for consumption at Mahe, the bodies of sea-birds, which 

 breed on the island in vast numbers, and which are easily taken 

 on their nests during the breeding season now just coming to 

 an end. The negroes spoke a French dialect, and, whether owing 

 to their habitual taciturnity, or to linguistic difficulties on our 

 part, we could not succeed in extracting much information from 

 them. We gathered, however, that turtle visited the island for 

 breeding purposes, but not at this time of the year. 



Bird Island is half-a-mile long, and a quarter of a mile in 

 width, being thus more or less oval in outline. It is formed 

 entirely of coral, and is margined all round with white glistening 

 beaches of calcareous sand. Outside this extends a fringing reef, 

 which forms a submerged platform, on which there is some three 

 or four fathoms of water, and which has a mean width radially of 

 about a quarter of a mile. There is no encircling barrier reef, 



