146 JUKDS OF TlEKItA DEL FUEGO 



conspicuous. Storm Petrels are small, and skim the waves: 

 whales are comparatively seldom seen, and do not show in 

 a heavy sea. Blow as it may, let the seas be what they will, 

 look out from a ship, rolling and pitching, straining and labour- 

 ing, wrestling with wind and wave for every moment of 

 existence, there is the Albatross perfectly at home. Never does 

 one tire of watching its ceaseless energy, wheeling in circles 

 a mile or more wide, now descending to the waves and dis- 

 appearing in their trough, now coming away with a magnificent 

 sweep against the sky. 



As one of the wonders of the ocean, this Albatross attracted 

 the notice of Sir Richard Hawkins as early as 1594. He 

 relates how in a storm off the Patagonian coast " certaine 

 great Fowles as big as Swannes, soared about us, and the 

 winde calming, setled themselues in the Sea, and fed vpon 

 the sweepings of om' ship ; which I perceiving, and desirous 

 to see of them, because they seemed farre greater than in 

 truth they were, I caused a Hook and Line to be brought me ; 

 and with a piece of a Pilchard, baited the Hooke, and a 

 foot from it, tied a piece of Corke, that it might not sinke 

 deepe, and threw it into the Sea, which, om' ship driuing with 

 the Sea, in a little time was a good space from vs, and one 

 of the Fowles beeng hungry, presently seized vpon it, and the 

 Hooke in his vpper beake. It is like to a Faulcons bill, but 

 that the point is moore crooked, in that manner, as by no meanes 

 hee could cleere himselfe, except that the Line brake, or the 

 Hooke righted. By the same manner of fishing, we caught so 

 many of them as refreshed and recreated all my people for that 

 day. Their bodies were great, but of little flesh and tender, in 

 taste answerable to the food whereon they feed. They were of 

 two colours, some white, some grey ; and from the poynt of 

 one wing to the poynt of the other, both stretched out, was 

 about two fathomes." 



The size and weight of the AYandering Albatross are points 

 of much divergence of oi^inion. 



