AN ALLURING THOUGHT. 221 



trees crowded with more gannets. Frigate-birds and 

 boatswain-birds were flying in every direction, and more 

 nests of both were found. Every rock and bush seemed 

 to harbour an iguana,* of which there must be many 

 thousands on this island alone. 



Seven hundred feet beneath us lay the Caribbean. 

 The wind had dropped, and from this height the sea 

 looked calm and peaceful as a lake. It stretched away 

 on all sides to the far distant horizon, streaked and 

 veined in the neighbourhood of the islands with many 

 dark Lines denoting currents. Away to the west lay 

 Blanquilla, appearing little more than a long sandy 

 spit in a setting of blue. All around us rose the rest 

 of the islands, each with a fringe of white breakers 

 on the windward side. Like Moses on the top of Pisgah, 

 we looked across at them with longing eyes, knowing full 

 well, that in all human probability we should never have 

 the chance to explore them. Yet any one of them might 

 contain something which would well repay the enthusiastic 

 naturalist for an arduous climb among their sun-baked 

 dechvities. 



There was a more alluring thought still, and one which 

 had the elements of possibility in it ; for might not any 

 or all of these islands represent the last stronghold of 

 those elusive races of petrels ((Estrelata) which used to 

 nest in burrows in the ground, high up in the lonely 

 mountains of Guadaloupe, Dominica and Jamaica ? 

 This very island we were on, with its many holes scattered 

 among the talus slopes of splintered rock, so secure too 

 from the marauding attacks of the mongoose, and eke, the 

 more familiar rat, both of which have played such a 

 fell part in the extermination of these interesting petrels 

 ((Estrelata hcesitata) and {(E. jamaicensis) , might well 

 harbour, at the proper breeding season, the last remnants 

 of either of these two races, or even give shelter to a race 

 pecuhar to itself. To make sure, one would have to 

 come here at the proper breeding season, with more leisure 



* Iguana tuber culata. 



