NATURAL HISTORY OF THE BERMUDAS. 399 



accounted as an enchaunted pile of rockes, and a desert 

 habitation for divils ; but all the fairies of the rockes were 

 but flocks of birds, and all the divils that haunted the 

 woods were but herds of swine. Yea, and when Acosta, 

 in his first booke of the hystories of the Indies, averreth 

 that though in the Continent there were diverse beasts, and 

 cattell, yet in the Islands of Hispaniola, Jamaica, Mar- 

 guarita, and Dominica there was not one hoof, it increaseth 

 the wonder how our people in the Bermudos found such 

 abundance of hogs, and that for nine months' space they 

 plentifully sufficed ; and yet the number seemed not much 

 diminished. Again, as in the great famine in Israeli, God 

 commanded Elias to flee to the brooke Cedron, and there 

 He fed him by ravens. So God provided for our discon- 

 solate people in the midst of the sea with foules, but with 

 an admirable difference : unto Elias the ravens brought 

 meate; unto our men the foules brought themselves for 

 meate, for when they whistled, or made any strange noyes, 

 the foules would come and sit on their shoulders, and they 

 would suffer themselves to be taken, and weighed by our 

 men, who would make choyse of the fattest and fairest, and 

 let flie the lean and the lightest." 



This fabulous assertion is repeated in Governor Smith's 

 " History of Virginia," and by several subsequent voyagers. 



Terrible hurricanes still, as of old, sweep over the 

 Bermudas, but since the erection of a splendid iron light- 

 house on Gibbs' Hill, the highest point in the islands, 

 wrecks have been almost unknown. 



This lighthouse is 160 feet high, and 245 feet above the 

 level of the sea ; it was erected at the expense of the 

 Home Government, on condition of its being kept up at 

 the expense of the Colonial Government. 



The flash of the light is of great brilliancy, continuing 

 for six or eight seconds ; the interval between the flashes 



