THE FLORIDA CORMORANT. 
143 
away affrighted ; while a great number stood on their nests and the branches; 
as if gazing upon beings strange to them. But alas ! they soon became too 
well acquainted with us, for the discharges from our guns committed frightful 
havoc among them. The dead were seen floating on the water, the crippled 
making towards the open sea, which here extended to the very Keys on 
which we were, while groups of a hundred or more swam about a little 
beyond reach of our shot, awaiting the event, and the air was filled with 
those whose anxiety to return to their eggs kept them hovering over us- in 
silence. In a short time the bottom of our boat was covered with the slain, 
several hats and caps were filled with eggs ; and we may now intermit the 
work of destruction. You must try to excuse these murders, which in truth 
might not have been nearly so numerous, had I not thought of you quite as 
often while on the Florida Keys, with a burning sun over my head, and my 
body oozing at every pore, as I do now while peaceably scratching my paper 
with an iron-pen, in one of the comfortable and quite cool houses of the most 
beautiful of all the cities of old Scotland. 
The' Florida Cormorant begins to pair about the first of April, and com- 
mences the construction of its nest about a fortnight after. Many do not 
lay quite so early, and I found some going through their preparations until 
the middle of May. Their courtships are performed on the water. On 
the morning, beautiful but extremely hot, of the 8th of that month, while 
rambling over one of the Keys, I arrived at the entrance of a narrow and 
rather deep channel, almost covered over by the boughs of the mangroves 
and some tall canes, the only tall canes I had hitherto observed among those 
islands. I paused, looked at the water, and observing it to be full of fish, 
felt confident that no shark was at hand. Cocking both locks of my gun, 
I quietly waded in. Curious sounds now reached my ears, and as the fishes 
did not appear to mind me much, I proceeded onward among them for 
perhaps a hundred yards, when I observed that they had all disappeared. 
The sounds were loud and constantly renewed, as if they came from a joyous 
multitude. The inlet suddenly became quite narrow, and the water reached 
to my arm-pits. At length I placed myself behind some mangrove trunks, 
whence I could see a great number of Cormorants not more than fifteen or 
twenty yards from me. None of them, it seemed, had seen or heard me ; 
they were engaged in going through their nuptial ceremonies. The males 
while swimming gracefully around the females, would raise their wings and 
tail, draw their head over their back, swell out their neck for an instant, and 
with a quick forward thrust of the head utter a rough guttural note, not 
unlike the cry of a pig The female at this moment would crouch as it were 
on the water, sinking into it, when her mate would sink over her until 
nothing more than his head was to be seen, and soon afterwards both sprung 
