92 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



agiia con mucha velocidad, y desan un rastro por el agua 

 como un bajel quando vaga." For the next mention of the 

 bird we are indebted to the narrative of the circumnaviga- 

 tion of the world by Oliver van Noort, undertaken sixteen 

 years later. It is there stated, that while in the Strait of 

 Magellan in January 1600, they were driven by a storm into 

 Goose Bay, " so-called of the store of that Fowle, their found 

 fit for swiming and long diuing, but vnable to flie."* There 

 does not appear to be any mention of the bird either in the 

 voyages of Cavendish or of Drake, nor in those of any of the 

 English navigators until after the middle of the seventeenth 

 century ; but in Wood's voyage through the Strait in 1669 

 reference is made to " great Blue Ducks, which last are not 

 very shy " — a very brief description, but which applies more to 

 the steamer-duck than to any other bird which he could have 

 encountered. In the following century, the steamer-duck is 

 noticed by several voyagers, and among these, by one of the 

 most scientific navigators the world has ever seen — the cele- 

 brated Captain Cook. In his "Voyage towards the South 

 Pole and round the World, performed by His Majesty's Ships 

 the ' Resolution ' and ' Adventure,' in the years 1772, 1773, 

 1774, and 1775," he remarks, in his account of Christmas 

 Sound, Tierra del Euego, that " here is a kind of duck, called 

 by our people race-horses, on account of the great swiftness 

 with which they run on the water ; for they cannot fly, the 

 wings being too short to support the body in the air. This 

 bird is at the Falkland Islands, as appears by Perety's 

 Journal ; " and again, in his description of Staten Land : — 

 " Here were ducks, but not many, and some of that sort we 

 called race-horses. We shot some, and found them to weigh 



* It is plain that steamer-ducks and not penguins are intended, as the 

 atter birds are mentioned elsewhere in the narrative. 



