410 HISTOET AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 



Captain Davis, and in 1594 were visited by Sir Richard Hawkins. They were afterwards seen by 

 the navigators Dampier, Strong, and others. Strong gave them their name in honor of Viscount 

 Falkland. They were uninhabited when discovered by the English. In 1763, after losing Canada, 

 the French made the first attempt to settle these islands, selecting them as a place of shelter for 

 vessels bound to the south seas. The British took possession of the islands in 1765, but both 

 attempts at settlements were unsuccessful The French ceded their settlement to the Spaniards 

 in 1767, and the English abandoned theirs as useless in 1774, 



Mr. Eben Townsend, who was sealing at the Falklands in 1797, writes in his diary as follows : 

 " There are two principal islands, called English and Spanish Maloons, with a number of small 

 islands. Each of the Maloon Islands is from 200 to 300 miles in length, and owned by the Spaniards, 

 who, on the western part of the Spanish Maloon, keep a garrison. They have in several instances 

 been troublesome to the Americans, but we saw nothing of them. The title to these islands has 

 formerly been a subject of much controversy among the maritime powers. In 1790 the British 

 took possession of Port Egmont. The Spaniards protested against it, to which no attention being 

 given an expedition was fitted out from Buenos Ayres, which drove them off. The British Gov- 

 ernment demanded satisfaction for being dispossessed by force, and the imbecile Spanish Govern- 

 ment, although in the right, acknowledged themselves in the wrong, disavowing their instructions 

 to their officers, and ordered everything to be restored and placed as it was when they attacked it. 

 The English, finding it of no importance, voluntarily evacuated it soon afterwards. In 1792 a cow 

 was shot there that had been ranging the island alone for about twenty years. She was fat and 

 in fine order. On that island there are plenty of hogs from the English stock, which are better 

 than on the other islands. There is very little wood on any of the islands, but there is plenty of 

 excellent water. The most convenient for a ship is West Point, or New Island. The latter place 

 is in latitude 51 40' south, which is the most general for the whalemen. At Little West Point 

 Harbor there is good water and plenty of hogs and some goats. All the islands produce plenty of 

 wild fowl, geese, ducks, teal, rooks, curlews, &c., and plenty of eggs in October, November, and 

 December, the albatross beginning to lay about the 1st to the 10th of October. Gulls, penguins, 

 and other birds are taken. I have seen a dozen acres covered with the albatross nests, with just 

 room to walk between them, built up with mud and straw about 2 feet in height. One of the eggs 

 would about fill a tumbler. They were equal in flavor to hens'eggs. We took on board about twenty 

 hogsheads for ships' stores, and we had them good for about four months. There are also plenty of 

 gulls' and penguins' eggs ; of the latter there are various kinds. The jackass penguins, making a 

 noise like the bray of a jackass, burrow in the ground, where they lay their eggs. The gintoo pen- 

 guins are in rookeries, like the albatross. As they have no wings and walk erect, whenever we 

 walked among them they very gently opened to the right and left for us to pass. We found very 

 few fish. We occasionally caught some alongside the ship. About the middle of December we 

 took a few barrels of mullet in States Harbor with a seine. We also in that harbor found round 

 clams, and among all the islands there are great plenty of mussels, which are very good; some 

 winkles and limpets, which are small shell fish, that adhere to the rocks ; a small blow suddenly 

 given takes them off. They have but a single shell. We also found on these islands plenty of rats 

 and some foxes, and in the earth the common angle-worm. On the whole these islands are bounti- 

 ful. A man with a gun and ammunition might live very well. The climate is not pleasant, 

 being subject to squalls of snow and hail, winter and summer; but it is never very warm nor very 

 cold. I never saw ice there half an inch thick, and our sailors never put on stockings or wanted them 

 during the winter. We had but little snow. There was no ice made in the harbor where w 

 lay excepting a little on the edge of the shore. 



