Howland Is. Birds and Rats — Howland 
97 
a gagging effect when first encountered and even after long exposure to it, seems to 
permeate to one’s vitals. Were it not for the rapid oxidation due to the savage and 
direct rays of the tropical sun, I doubt if life could be supported even with all things 
necessary, as we had, for more than a few days so ever present is the flavor arising 
from these huge deposits of bird droppings. 
Shortly after noon, a suitable landing place had been found and Captain Pope and 
I took council as to my future plans. Telling the boats’ crews to leave the supplies 
in the boats and stand by them, we started to walk in an easterly direction to discover 
the size and character of the Island. The walk was most exhausting and filthy and the 
extraordinary tameness of the birds made it necessary to scuffle through them at 
times as one would if walking through windrows of dead leaves in the autumn at 
home. We succeeded, after more than an hour’s picking our way through nests and 
filth and very broken ground, in reaching the eastern shore of the Island . . . The 
surface of the land, what little we could see of it, seemed to be made up of rocks 
of a loose lime stone sort, very much honeycomed by erosion, with considerable 
patches of low dry bushes and coarse dry grass in the low parts. 
Next to the birds and living in close and constant proximity to them, the only 
fauna we observed were armies of rats. They appeared to be of the gray Scandinavian 
variety and to be subsisting and thriving on the eggs and fledglings it was only too 
easy for them to obtain. Occasionally the birds would make a raid on a band of rats 
engaged in these depredations and succeed in seizing some of the younger robbers. 
They would, we observed, kill the rats by tearing them to pieces with their beaks 
and talons, or more often where the rat was of a small size, fly off to a point at a 
considerable height above the reefs and drop their prey into the pounding surf where 
it would seem the rat would perish . . . 
I am of the opinion [that] originally there was some condition of the rock formation 
that allowed the rain water to collect and stand on the surface and by slow degrees 
give the sand and chance blown and dropped seeds opportunity to gradually develop 
into a sort of soil in which has grown the short tough grass and low bush which forms 
the only vegetation on the Island. Six more such hollows were discovered and in 
every case there was a depression or natural basin. It is my belief that the bushes 
which in no case were of more than three feet in height are a variety of grass rather 
than a shrub as there did not appear to be a well defined leaf system on them and 
their habit of growth and the structure of their branches all starting from a common 
root or root cluster and the arrangement of the blossoms and seed vessels indicated 
that they belonged to the grass family rather than the tree family. Their color was 
of sage green and their tips in most cases seemed to be withered and scorched by 
the sun and wind. The grass was coarse like Bermuda grass but grew much less 
closely than this in isolated clumps and colonies but without a trace that I could 
discover of any other form of vegetation . . . During this entire journey . . . vast 
armies of rats were as unafraid of us as the birds and squealed and bit at us as we 
trod on their squirming tails and often destroyed several at a time by coming down 
directly on their bodies as we slipped or dropped off of the rocks. We seemed to be 
targets for the birds that rose at our approach and long before we arrived at the North 
End of the Island, we were completely encased in a thick film of bird manure which 
the sun baked quickly into something resembling a whitish pie crust in consistency . . . 
