112 FISHING CORMORANTS. (Caar. VIL 
part with them, or, indeed, to speak at all on the 
subject, when I met them in the country, owing to 
our place of meeting being generally in those parts 
of the interior where the English are never seen, I 
applied to Her Majesty’s Consul at Shanghae (Cap- 
tain Balfour), who very kindly sent one of the 
Chinese connected with the Consulate into the coun- _ 
try, and procured two pairs forme. The difficulty 
now was to provide food for them on the voyage 
from Shanghae to Hong-kong. We procured a 
large quantity of live eels, this being a principal 
part of their food, and put them into a jar of mud 
and fresh water. These they eat in a most vora- 
cious manner, swallowing them whole, and in many 
instances vomiting them afterwards. If one bird 
was unlucky enough to vomit his eel, he was for- 
tunate indeed if he caught it again, for another, as 
voracious as himself, would instantly seize it, and 
swallow it in a moment. Often they would fight 
stoutly for the fish, and then it either became the 
property of one, or, as often happened, their sharp 
bills divided the prey, and each ran off and devoured 
the half which fell to his share. During the passage 
down we encountered a heavy gale at sea, and as 
the vessel was one of those small clipper schooners, 
she pitched and rolled very much, shipping seas 
from bow to stern, which set every thing on her 
decks swimming. I put my head out of the cabin- 
door when the gale was at its height, and the first 
thing I saw was the cormorants devouring the eels, 
which were floating all over the decks. I then 
