SEA-SWALLOWS. 229 



of our British species (Sterna hirundo), as it rested 

 on a patch of mud, a boat's-buoy, or a piece of 

 floating wood, till we might have almost knocked it 

 down with a stick. They appea'r, indeed, to have 

 little or no sense of danger: if three or four are in 

 company, and one is shot, the others will usually, 

 instead of hurrying away, come fluttering down to 

 the dead body, uttering their soft, mournful, or, as in 

 this case, it might be termed, reproachful cry. Their 

 whole appearance is in truth so beautiful and attrac- 

 tive, that we can readily enter into the feeling with 

 which one of these birds was regarded by a forlorn, 

 starving boat's-crew, whose vessel, striking on an ice- 

 island, on her passage from Plalifax, in North Ame- 

 rica to England, foundered, and left her miserable 

 inmates on the wide ocean, hourly expecting to be 

 swallowed up by the heavy seas, which were con- 

 stantly breaking over the crowded boats. It was 

 on the evening of the sixth day after quitting the 

 wreck*, just before night set in, that a beautiful 

 white bird, " web-footed, and not unlike a Dove 

 in size and plumage, hovered over the mast-head 

 of the cutter; and, notwithstanding the pitching 

 of the boat, frequently attempted to perch on it, 

 and continued fluttering there till dark. Trifling as 

 this circumstance may appear," continues the writer 

 of the narrative, " it was considered by us all as a 

 propitious omen. The impressive manner in which 

 it left us, and returned to gladden us with its pre- 

 sence, awakened in us a superstition, to which 

 sailors are at all times said to be prone. We in- 



* Narrative of the loss of the Lady Hobart Packet. 



