44 
living on one kind of food.” (Part a. Book i. ch. 1, 
S€C. 9D.) . aes: 
From the light house on the Port Royal palisades 
to Portland in Vere, a line encloses a system of coast 
islands, reefs, banks, and shoals colonized by nume- 
rous birds, and fishes. Each kind has itsown locality. 
Pelican key and Pigeon island never interchange in- 
habitants, and the bank that gives the king fish, 
gives neither the snapper nor the grouper. South- 
ward from Portland, at adistance of some few leagues, 
the great Pedro bank is reached stretching near a 
hundred miles. There are islets at each extremity, 
but the group that attracts the ege-gatherers every 
year, are the keys distinguished as the Pedros at its 
eastern end. We shall loiter a httle to describe a 
living world there that niust have been a great 
attraction to the aboriginal Indians, in those perio- 
dical. junketings that came under the notice of 
Columbus. 2 
The Port Royal boats bound for the egg-harvest, 
bring to at the outermost of the Portland keys, and 
start at midnight from there, to gain with a favoure 
able breeze in 14 or 15 hours the shelter of the Pe- 
dros, and to be snug at anchor long before sundown. 
The vessels in their voyage steer for a-single rock in 
fathomiess water, the Isla Sola of the Spanish maps. 
It rises about 30 or 4G feet out of the sea like a cas- 
tle in ruins, over which the surf breaks fiercely ; and- 
in about five or six hours after making it, they an- 
chor within what are properly called the keys. 
. There are numerous outlying rocks just above and 

