382 Mr. O. Salvin on the Sea-birds of British Honduras. 
drink. The tub is then removed, and buried in another hole. 
During the dry season, the few people who live on the Cays 
have no other supply. Of wood we could always find enough 
from the broken spars, boards, and logs thrown up on the beach. 
Rounding the south end of Half-Moon Cay, the schooner 
passed out into open water, and Sam steered her straight for 
Glover's Reef. The wind was light, the -water lumpy, and the 
sun intensely hot as we slowly made our w r ay across. I was 
glad enough when I detected a w T hite line of breakers far ahead. 
This -was the northern end of the reef, towards a gap in which 
we steered. Passing through this channel, Sam pointed to the 
spot where the schooner * Susan’ was wrecked, with 300 fili¬ 
busters on board, some few years ago, as they were sailing to 
join Walker on the coast of Honduras, for the purpose of attack¬ 
ing Nicaragua, after passing through that republic. This dis¬ 
aster put an end to the expedition for the time, the shipwrecked 
adventurers being taken back to New Orleans by a British 
cruiser. The next attempt upon the same point put an end to 
Walker’s career, when he was taken by the c Icarus/ handed 
over to the Honduras authorities, and shot. Sam had many a 
story to tell about them, how he and his brothers had fished up 
muskets and sold them in Belize, and how a party of the fili¬ 
busters whilst living on Middle Cay had shot his mother’s pigs 
with their revolvers, and eaten his father’s cocoa-nuts. Once 
inside the reef, there was not much time for talking, as patches 
of coral-rock studded the lagoon, and the schooner dashing 
along under the freshening breeze required careful steering. 
Middle Cay now stood before us, and, anchoring under the 
lee of the island, w r e went ashore with our hammocks, and took 
possession of an empty hut built out of the wreck of the ‘ Susan.’ 
There is little variation in all these Cays, one sees the same 
repetition of cocoa-nut groves and mangrove-swamps, the 
latter, when present, being usually in the middle of the island. 
The cocoa-nut trees have most of them been planted by the 
occupier of the Cay, the (C bush " growing on the sandier portions 
being cleared for the purpose. It is said that in five years a 
tree produces its first fruit; and that it lives for sixty or more, 
if not uprooted by a storm. Cocoa-nut growing seems profit- 
