260 A. E. Verrill— The Bermuda Islands. 672 
and the silly wilde birds comming so tame into my cabbin and goe so 
familiarly betweene my feet, and round about the cabbin, and into 
the fire, with a strange lamentable noyse, as though they did bemoan 
us, and bid us to take, kill, roast, and eate them : I was much amazed, 
and at length said within myselfe, surely the tameness of these wilde 
birds, and their offring of themselves to be taken, is a manifest token 
of the goodnesse of God even of his love, his care, his mercy and 
power working together, to save this people from starving. Mr. 
Moore, then Governour, fearing that their overeating themselves 
would be their destruction, did remove them from thence to Port 
Royoll, where they found but little or no want ; for birds they had 
there also, brought to them every weeke, from the Ilands adjoyning, 
whither some were sent of purpose to bird for them.” 
That Mr. Hughes referred mainly to the cahow, though he did 
not mention the name of the “silly birds,” may be properly inferred, 
because of the season, ‘‘beginning of the newe yeare,” when the 
large party of starving settlers was sent there for food, for the egg- 
birds did not arrive until the first of May. This famine with the 
sending of a large number of starving persons to feed on the defence- 
less birds at their breeding season, was unquestionably the direct 
and principal cause of their very rapid extermination, for it was 
during the next year (1616) that the first law was passed, “ but 
overlate,” restricting the “spoyle and havock of the cahowes.” 
Capt. John Smith’s account of this event is as follows : 
“Thus famine and misery caused Governour More leave all his 
workes, and send them abroad to get what they could ; one hundred 
and fifty of the most weake and sicke he sent to Coupers Isle, where 
were such infinite numbers of the Birds called Cahowes, which were 
so fearlesse they might take so many as they would.” 
These accounts of the habits of the cahow would not, in the least, 
apply to the shearwater. It is probabie that another nocturnal bird 
called “ Pimlico” by the early settlers was the shearwater; the 
latter is still called “pimlico”’ by the native fishermen. (See below.) 
Although it was very unfortunate that Governor Moore was — 
obliged to place those famished people on Cooper’s Island during the 
breeding season of the birds, it is evident that he had no other 
resource. No other food could be had, at that season, to keep the 
people from sheer starvation. How long they remained there is 
uncertain, but it was long enough to exterminate nearly all the 
breeding birds. They may, perhaps, have remained till the egg-birds 
arrived in spring, and thus helped to exterminate these birds also. 
