451 A. EF. Verrill—The Bermuda Islands. 39 
may have been the original wall, on the same site. (Plates xxix 
and Ixxx.) 
The island itself is a barren-looking place, with thin dry soil 
between the rough limestone ledges, supporting a scanty crop of 
wiry grasses, weeds, and seaside shrubs, with an abundance of large 
prickly pears (Opuntia), but with no trees, except a very few small 
stunted cedars. According to the early writers, it was originally 
well wooded with cedar, like most of the other islands. The smaller 
land crabs burrow there, wherever there is sandy soil. 
The native lizard is abundant among the ruins and in the crevices 
of the ledges, and can often be seen basking in the warm sunshine, 
but it is a very watchful and agile creature, and can seldom be taken 
alive. It has the habit, common to many lizards, of quickly drop- 
ping off its tail when in danger. (See Part III, ch. 31.) 
The tropic birds are generally to be seen, in their season, flying 
overhead and screaming threateningly at the intruder into these 
their solitudes. They breed in the holes of the cliffs, and sometimes 
in the drains of the old forts and barracks. (See plate ]xxii.) 
The total effect of the piace, to an imaginative person, is weird 
and desolate, like the ancient ruins of the old world. Governor 
Moore, in 1612, very soon after his arrival with the first settlers, 
mounted a gun or two on this island. In 1613 he built a cedar plat- 
form on the “‘Gurnett Head,” and mounted four guns upon it, and 
he probably also had built or commenced a cedar redoubt or maga- 
zine, aS usual at that time. In 1613 (about September) two strange 
vessels, supposed to be Spanish, attempted to enter the harbor, but 
were driven away by the governor in the fort. The governor him- 
self, who, according to Governor Butler, “‘ was a very good gunner,” 
twice discharged a “great gun” at one of the vessels, hitting it at 
the second shot. In this connection it is recorded by Governor 
Butler (1619) that it was lucky that the vessels did not attack the 
fort, for there were only four guns mounted and they had at the fort 
only about twenty men, “many of thoes very weake and feeble with 
want of foode,” and they had but little gunpowder and only one 
spare shot. His account is as follows: 
“Wherein certainely ther was evidently a great deale of devine 
providence for the good of the poore plantation ; for ther wer not at 
that time above twenty persons at the Gurnetts head, and many of 
thoes very weake and feeble with want of foode; ther wer then only 
foure peeces mounted, the which though they wer all of them 
laden, yet was ther not above three quarters of a barrell of 
powder besides, and one only shott.” 
