540 
THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER, 
feathers oft’ each of the birds and threw them on the fire for the rest of the feathers to 
singe partly oft'. Before they were well warm through, they pulled the birds out and 
tore them to pieces, and ate them all bleeding, devouring a good deal of the entrails. 
“ On one occasion, when I wished to start very early on a shooting expedition in order 
to come upon the birds about daybreak, which is always the best time for finding them 
in the tropics, I went to the camp of the blacks to fetch Longway, just as it was begin- 
ning to dawn. The blacks were not by any means so easily roused as I had expected ; I 
found them all asleep, and had to shout at them, but then they all started up scared, as 
if expecting an attack. I had great difficulty in persuading Longway to go with me at 
that early hour, and he complained of the cold for some hours. I think the blacks 
usually lie in camp till the sun has been up some little time, and the air has been 
warmed. 
“ With regard to expression, I noticed that the Gudangs used the same gesture of 
refusal or dissent as the Api men, namely, the shrugging of one shoulder, with the head 
bent over to the same side. Their facial expressions were, as far as I saw them, normal, 
I mean like those of Europeans. 
“ Altogether, these blacks are, I suppose, nearly as low as any savages. They have no 
clothes (some have bits of European ones now), no canoes, no hatchets, no boomerangs, 
no chiefs. Their graves, described in the Voyage of the ‘Fly,’ are remarkable in their 
form, being long low mounds of sand, with a wooden post set up at each of the corners. 
There is far more trouble taken with them than would be expected.” 
The beach at Somerset is composed of siliceous sand. The European voyager 
amongst coral islands becomes so used to see the beaches made up of calcareous sand, 
that it appears quite a novel feature to him when he meets again with siliceous sand, to 
which he is accustomed at home. The sandy beach slopes down, to end abruptly on a 
nearly horizontal mud flat, bare at low water, which is mainly calcareous, and in fact a 
shore platform reef. At low water, during spring tides, blocks of dead massive corals, 
such as Astraeidse, are seen to compose the verge of these mud flats, and it is from the 
detritus of these that the mud is formed. Amongst these blocks are a few living corals, 
a species of Eupliyllia, a small Astrcea, and a cup or mushroom-shaped Turbinaria. 
There is a considerable variety of species of seaweeds on the flats, and also 
several forms of sea-grasses, as a species of Halopliila, the large hairy Enlialus, and a 
Thalassia growing together, and spreading in abundance over the mud, which was 
matted with their roots in many places. 
The channel between Somerset and Albany Island is shallow, being nowhere more 
than 14 fathoms in depth. The dredge here brought up a rare species of Trigonia, and 
the “ Lancelet ” (Amphioxus lanceolatus), which seems to have an extremely wide range 
of distribution. The fauna on the whole was very like that of Port Jackson. 
