Jail., 1904 I 
THE CONDOR 
1 1 
the edge of a small pond or lagoon the teal would swim up within a few feet, the 
males uttering their soft we-u we-u as they jealously guarded their mates from 
the advances of a rival. 
I have made no mention of the shearwaters, penguins, gulls, terns, or oyster- 
catchers but all of these are tame and I have pictures of each in their favorite atti- 
tudes. The petrels, even, that nest on one of the islands seem not to have the 
usual fear of their kind for they fly about and enter their nests by day as well as 
by night. To stand on a high cliff above the ocean and watch a great flock of pet- 
rels darting about you like a swarm of bees, with the pungent smell of their oil in 
the nostrils, and the muffled tuc, tuc, tucoo, tucoo of many shearwaters rising out 
of the cracks in the lava underfoot, while beautiful gulls and harsh-voiced boobies 
and frigate birds join in resenting your intrusion upon a spot where man never 
stood before, is a pleasure that more than offsets the scratches received in 
getting there. And the albatrosses! What fun it was to watch them at their pecu- 
liar fencing exercise. To see a big albatross walk up to another big fellow with all 
the swagger of a Bowery tough and bow to him as ceremoniousl}^ and gravely as a 
prime minister could, and 
then to see them fence 
with their bills as rapidly 
as do swordsmen with light 
rapiers, is a sight I will 
never forget. Nor will I 
soon forget the old rascal, 
who came for me on the 
dead run and who, if I had 
not luckily cracked him on 
the head with the butt of 
ray collecting pistol, would 
have lunged his powerful 
beak half way through me. 
An odd fact about the al- 
batrosses is the direction of 
their flight from the island. 
They fly straight out to 
the southward and none are seen about the north side of the island nor about any 
of the other islands. We were on the island two da3^s before we found them tho 
the island is not more than four miles across and there were hundreds of the birds. 
There are numerous other things to amuse and interest the visitor to this iso- 
lated group of islands. From the little fiddler crabs that suddenly disappear be- 
fore one’s eyes on the beach to the flaming volcano that as suddenly appears on 
the mountain top, there is something to observe continually. Tho I have been 
there three times, I hope to make j^et another trip to those isles where the turtle 
sleeps unmolested on the beach, and the bark of a seal or the weird cry of a far- 
away penguin are the last sounds of the night one hears as he drops into grateful 
slumber. 
l^at. 19° 24' N., Fong. 116° 12' W., July 10, 1903. 
