22 A NATURALIST ON DESERT ISLANDS. 



after all, is much the same. While we were on the island 

 as many as one or two steamers a week or three a fortnight 

 seemed to be quite the usual thing to see passing. At 

 any rate they said it was. Could anyone want more ? 

 If they did, they might as well live at Tilbury Docks. 



But hfe on isolated coral islands, such as these, is not 

 all honej^ and sugar and unalloyed bliss. You camiot 

 have all sun, without little scraps of shade ; and one was 

 conscious, from time to time during our stay, of passing 

 shadows, of little rifts in the lute, of unsatisfied cravings 

 for society, of a yearning on the part of these Hyperboreans 

 for normal human intercourse. 



One day in our wanderings we came across a little 

 shaded sanctuary in the woods — a pathetic little garden, 

 quite formal with its trim paths and conventional beds, 

 and all in strange contrast to the wild scenes of vegetative 

 reveky which surrounded it. Mingled with various 

 exotic shrubs which flaunted their gaudy blossoms in 

 all the richness of tropical display, there were humble 

 friends from northern and more bracing latitudes — old 

 and cherished links with the past — and in one spot, which 

 some one obviously regarded as the very shrine of this 

 retreat amid the trees, were some English roses. These 

 roses were doing their pathetic best to blossom, but they 

 looked thoroughly tired, and they icere without a scrap 

 of scent. Need we labour our point ? 



I have a keen recollection, too, of how even the dogs 

 which the islanders possessed, seemed somehow to 

 accentuate the absence of this human element. There 

 was one especially — an Airedale terrier — which used to 

 come with me on some of my bird-nesting tramps ; a 

 friendly pal who made the woods and the grass-grown 

 rides, which have been cut from one point of the island 

 to another, seem less lonety. 



This dog's greatest delight was to retrieve fish from 

 the sea. Whenever we wanted bait for fishing purposes, 

 the " laird " used to throw a small dynamite cartridge 

 into the water at the head of his httle harbour. In a 



