432 THE FLORIDA CORMORANT. 



away affrighted; while a great number stood on their nests and the branches, 

 as if gazing upon beings strange to them. But alas! they soon became too 

 well acquainted with us, for the discharges from our guns committed frightful 

 havoc among them. The dead were seen floating on the water, the crippled 

 making towards the open sea, which here extended to the very Keys on 

 which we were, while groups of a hundred or more swam about a little 

 beyond reach of our shot, awaiting the event, and the air was filled with 

 those whose anxiety to return to their eggs kept them hovering over us in 

 silence. In a short time the bottom of our boat was covered with the slain, 

 several hats and caps were filled with eggs; and we may now intermit the 

 work of destruction. You must try to excuse these murders, which in truth 

 might not have been nearly so numerous, had I not thought of you quite as 

 often while on the Florida Keys, with a burning sun over my head, and my 

 body oozing at every pore, as I do now while peaceably scratching my paper 

 with an iron-pen, in one of the comfortable and quite cool houses of the most 

 beautiful of all the cities of old Scotland. 



The Florida Cormorant begins to pair about the first of April, and com- 

 mences the construction of its nest about a fortnight after. Many do not lay 

 quite so early, and I found some going through their preparations until the 

 middle of May. Their courtships are performed on the water. On the 

 morning, beautiful but extremely hot, of the Sth of that month, while 

 rambling over one of the Keys, I arrived at the entrance of a narrow and 

 rather deep channel, almost covered over by the boughs of the mangroves 

 and some tall canes, the only tall canes I had hitherto observed among those 

 islands. I paused, looked at the water, and observing it to be full of fish, 

 felt confident that no shark was at hand. Cocking both locks of my gun, I 

 quietly waded in. Curious sounds now reached my ears, and as the fishes 

 did not appear to mind me much, I proceeded onward among them for 

 perhaps a hundred yards, when I observed that they had all disappeared. 

 The sounds were loud and constantly renewed, as if they came from a joyous 

 multitude. The inlet suddenly became quite narrow, and the water reached 

 to my arm-pits. At length I placed myself behind some mangrove trunks, 

 whence I could see a great number of Cormorants not more than fifteen or 

 twenty yards from me. None of them, it seemed, had seen or heard me; 

 they were engaged in going through their nuptial ceremonies. The males 

 while swimming gracefully around the females, would raise their wings and 

 tail, draw their head over their back, swell out their neck for an instant, and 

 with a quick forward thrust of the head utter a rough guttural note, not 

 unlike the cry of a pig. The female at this moment would crouch as it were 

 on the water, sinking into it, when her mate would sink over her until 

 nothing more than his head was to be seen, and soon afterwards both sprung 



