CRUISE IN THE SOUTHERN CHINA SEA. 59 



diameter, we shot a blue-arid- white king fisher and the reef 

 heron. 



These islets, neither of which is more than 150 feet high, 

 are covered with thin jungle in which we saw several specimens 

 of the Nicobar pigeon — the "burong mis" or golden bird of 

 the Malays. 



Taya was left at midday on the 28th and soon after making 

 sail a squall from the south-west struck us. We ran before it, 

 goosewinged with scandalised sails, the seas racing up behind 

 and breaking in showers of spray under the counter. In the 

 couple of hours it lasted we had made nearly twenty miles of 

 our way to Pulo Pengiki Besar and afterwards sailing with a 

 wind that allowed an easy course to be laid, anchor was dropped 

 in a bay on the north side of the island at six o'clock on the 

 evening of July 31st. 



Pulo Pengiki Besar or St. Barbe Island. 



Seen from a distance Pengiki appears like two or three 

 separate islands, being lower at the centre than in the north-east 

 and west. Its height is about 750 feet and it is covered with 

 trees except at those places on the hill sides where large outcrops 

 of rock occur. On such spots what vegetation exists is of a 

 sparse and stunted type. 



For some distance from the shore a reef filled up the bay 

 where, indeed, the conditions are most favourable for the growth 

 of corals. As one rowed over the pellucid green water, looking 

 down they were to be seen in indescribable variety — great 

 heads formed like massive boulders and tiny sprays no less 

 delicate than a piece of moss. Corals of all shapes and shade 

 were there — pink, grey, yellow, brown, blue, green, red, while 

 among the crevices and branches swam fish as gorgeous as their 

 surroundings — little fellows half an inch in length, blue, red, and 

 yellow and others of larger size whose brilliancy of colouring 

 passed almost unremarked by comparison with the grotesqueness 

 of their forms. 



In the centre of the bay and connected at low tide with the 

 shore stood a rocky islet frequented by numbers of the white 

 tern (Sterna bergii) with rose-tinted breasts from which the Hush 

 fades immediately after death. 



R. A. Soc , No. 41, 1903. 



