Gunnison's island — gulls and pelicans. 179 



distance — fifteen, seventeen, and twenty feet ; and ten feet, "within 

 a hundred and fifty feet of the shore. 



There are two islands here, one of them quite small, and lying 

 within one hundred yards to the northward of the larger one, of 

 which it has at one time formed a part. We landed at the head 

 of a beautiful little sandy bay, on the eastern side, which has its 

 counterpart on the western, the two being separated by a low, 

 narrow neck of land, forming a delightful little nook, and separat- 

 ing the lofty pile of rock forming the northern part of the island 

 from the rocky cliffs which extend to its southern extremity. 



The whole neck and the shores on both of the little bays were 

 occupied by immense flocks of pelicans and gulls, disturbed now for 

 the first time, probably, by the intrusion of man. They literally 

 darkened the air as they rose upon the wing, and, hovering over 

 our heads, caused the surrounding rocks to re-echo with their dis- 

 cordant screams. The ground was thickly strewn with their nests, 

 of which there must have been some thousands. Numerous young, 

 unfledged pelicans, were found in the nests on the ground, and 

 hundreds half-grown, huddled together in groups near the water, 

 while the old ones retired to a long line of sand-beach on the 

 southern side of the bay, where they stood drawn up, like Prussian 

 soldiers, in ranks three or four deep, for hours together, apparently 

 without motion. 



. A full-grown one was surprised and captured by the men, just 

 as he was rising from the ground, and hurried in triumph to the 

 beach. He was very indignant at the unceremonious manner in 

 which he was treated, and snapped furiously with his long bill to 

 the right and left at everybody that came near him. On the top 

 of his bill, about midway of its length, was a projection about an 

 inch long and half an inch high, resembling the old-fashioned sight 

 of a rifle : in the female this is wanting. We collected as many 

 eggs as we could carry. That of the gull is of the size of a hen's 

 egg, brown and spotted; that of the pelican is white, and about as 

 large as a goose egg. The white of the latter, when cooked, is 

 translucent, and resembles clear hlanc-mange. 



After much searching, we found among the scanty drift-wood 

 along the beach, two indifferent sticks with which to build a station. 

 We set them up on the highest peak of the island, at its northern 

 extremity, where a nearly perpendicular cliff of dark-gray limestone 

 rises from the water to the height of five hundred feet. 



It was a work of great fatigue to transport these heavy timbers 



