From Pole to Pole: A Book for Young People — Sec 22 In the South Seas

V IN THE SOUTH SEAS

ALBATROSSES AND WHALES

Like the sting on the scorpion's poison gland, Tierra del Fuego, the most southern land of America, juts out into the southern sea.

It is separated from the mainland by the sound which bears the name of the intrepid Magellan.

In the primeval forests of the interior grow evergreen beeches, and there copper-brown Indians of the Ona tribe formerly held unlimited sway.

Like their brethren all over the New World, they have been thrust out by white men and are doomed to extinction.

They were only sojourners on the coasts of Tierra del Fuego, and their term has expired.

Only a few now remain, but they still retain the old characteristics of their race, are powerfully built, warlike and brave, live at feud with their neighbours, and kindle their camp fires in the woods, on the shores of lakes, or on the coast.

Many a sailing vessel has come to grief in the Straits of Magellan.

The channel is dangerous, and has a bad reputation for violent squalls, which beat down suddenly over the precipitous cliffs.

It is safer to keep to the open sea and sail to the south of the islands of Tierra del Fuego.

Here the surges of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans roar together against the high cliffs of Cape Horn.

Who listens to this song, who gazes with royal disdain down over the spray, who wonders why the breakers have been there for thousands of years pounding against gates that never open, who soars at this moment with outspread wings over Cape Horn--who but the albatross, the largest of all storm birds, the boldest and most unwearied of all the winged inhabitants of the realm of air?

Look at him well, for in a second he will be gone.

You see that he is as large as a swan, has a short, thick neck, a large head with a powerful pink and yellowish bill, and that he is quite white except where his wing feathers are black.

His wings are wonders of creation.

When he folds them, they cling close to the body and seem to disappear;

but now he has spread them out, and they measure twelve feet from tip to tip.

They are long and narrow, thin and finely formed as a sword blade.

He moves them with amazing steadiness, and excels all other birds in strength and endurance.

No bird has such an elegant and majestic flight.

He spreads his wings like sails with taut sheets, and soars at a whistling pace up against the wind.

Follow him with your eyes hour after hour in the hardest wind, and you will see that he makes a scarcely perceptible beat of his wings only every seventh minute, keeping them between whiles perfectly still.

That is his secret.

All his skill consists in his manner of holding his wings expanded and the inclination he gives to his excellent monoplane in relation to his body and the wind.

Everything else, change of elevation, and movement forwards with or against the wind, is managed by the wind itself.

When he wishes to rise from the surface of the sea he spreads his wings, turns towards the wind, and lets it lift him up.

Then he soars in elegant curves and glides up the invisible hills of the atmosphere.

Most noteworthy is the perfect freedom of the albatross.

He shuns the mainland and breeds on solitary islands; he can scarcely move on the ground, and when he is forced to alight he waddles clumsily along like a swan.

He comes in contact with the earth only at the nest, where the hen sits on her single egg and tucks her white head under her wing.

Otherwise he does not touch the ground.

He finds his food on the surface of the sea, and spends three-fourths of his life in the air.

There he soars about from sea to sea like a satellite to the earth, moving freely and lightly round the heavy globe as it rolls through space.

He is not restricted to any particular course, no distance is too great for him; he simply rests on his wings and sweeps easily from ocean to ocean.

He is, however, rarer in the Atlantic than in the Pacific Ocean, and he avoids the heat of equatorial regions.

He sails in any other direction he pleases, where he has most prospect of satisfying his voracious appetite.

What do you think of an albatross which was caught on a vessel and marked so that it might be recognised again, and which then followed the vessel for six days and nights watching for any refuse thrown out?

The ship was in the open sea and was sailing twelve knots an hour, but the albatross did not tire.

Nay, he made circles of miles round the vessel at a considerable height.

On board the ship the watch was changed time after time, for man must rest and sleep, but the albatross needed neither sleep nor rest.

He had no one to whom he could entrust the management of his wings while he slept at night.

He kept awake for a week without showing any signs of weariness.

He flew on and on, sometimes disappearing astern, and an hour later appearing again and sweeping down on the vessel from the front.

That it was the same albatross was proved by the mark painted on the breast.

Only on the seventh day did he leave the ship, dissatisfied with the fare set before him.

He was then hundreds of miles from the nearest coast.

Just think of all the wonderful and remarkable sights he must witness on his airy course!

He sees everything that takes place on the decks of large sailing vessels, and the smoke rising out of the steamers' funnels.

He marks the clumsy movements of the twenty-feet-long sea-elephants on the gravel shore of the islands of South Georgia, east of Cape Horn, and sees the black or grey backs of whales rolling on the surface of the water.

Perhaps he has some time wandered away northwards over the Atlantic and seen whalers attack the blue whale--the largest animal now living in the world, for it often attains to a length of 90 feet.

At the present day whalers use strongly built, swift, and easily handled steam-launches, and shoot the harpoon out from the bow with a pivoted gun.

In the head of the harpoon is a pointed shell which explodes in the body of the whale, dealing a mortal wound, and at the butt end a thick rope is secured.

The vessel follows the whale until it is dead.

Then it is hauled up with a steam winch and towed to a whaling station in some bay on the coast, where it is flitched.

Then the oil is boiled out, poured into casks, and sent to market.

Much more picturesque and more dangerous was the whaling witnessed in northern seas by the forefathers of the albatross, for man has been for a thousand years the worst enemy of the whale, and some species are almost exterminated.

Then the whalers did not use a gun, but threw the harpoon by hand.

Every vessel had several keelless whale-boats, pointed at both bow and stern, so that they could be rowed forwards or backwards.

When a whale was seen in the distance the boats set out, each boat manned by six experienced whalers.

One of them was the coxswain, another the harpooner, while the others sat at the oars.

The harpoon line, an inch thick, lay carefully coiled up, and ran out through a brass eye in the bow.

Every man knew from long experience what he had to do at any particular minute, and therefore there was silence on board, all working without orders.

When all is ready one of the boats rows towards the whale, and the harpooner throws his sharp weapon with all his strength into the whale's flank.

Almost before the harpoon has struck the boat is backed swiftly.

Wild with pain, the whale may strike the boat from above with his powerful horizontal caudal fin and crush it at a blow, or he may dive below the boat and upset it, but usually he thinks only of making his escape.

He makes for the depths in fright, and the harpoon line runs out, the strands producing a singing sound.

Great care is necessary, for if the line curls round a man's leg he is carried overboard and is lost.

The whale dives at once to a depth of a couple of hundred fathoms.

There it is dark and quiet, and he remains there half an hour or an hour, till at length he is obliged to come up to breathe.

The lie of the line in the water shows approximately where he will come up again, and another boat rows to the spot.

As soon as he appears above the surface a second harpoon whistles through the air.

The whale is now too breathless to dive.

He swims along the surface and lashes the waves with his tail to free himself from his tormentors.

He speeds along at a desperate pace, dashing the waves into spray around him and drawing the boats after him.

The crews have hauled in the lines, and the boats are quite close to the whale, but they must be ready to pay out the lines if the whale dives.

The boats' prows are tilted high up into the air and the water streams off them.

They shoot forward like mad things through the foaming sea, whether it be day or night, and pitch up and down over the crests of the waves.

With stretched muscles, clenched teeth, and glaring eyes the whale-hunters follow the movements of the whale and the boat.

They notice that the pace slackens.

The whale begins to tire, and at last is quite exhausted.

Its movements become irregular, it stops and throws itself about so that the water spurts up round it.

Then a boat rows up, and a long spear is thrust in three feet deep towards the animal's heart, and perhaps an explosive bullet is fired.

If the lungs are pierced the whale sends up jets of blood from its nostrils--"hoisting the red flag," in the language of whalers.

Its time is come; it gives up the struggle, and its death tremors show that another of the giants of the ocean has bid a last farewell to its boundless realm.

ROBINSON CRUSOE'S ISLAND

On motionless wings an albatross hovers high above Cape Horn.

His sharp eye takes in everything.

Now he sees in the distance smoke from the funnel of a steamer, and in a couple of minutes he has tacked round the vessel and decided to follow it on its voyage to the north.

To the east he has the coast of Chile, with its countless reefs and islands and deep fiords, and above it rises the snow-capped crest of the Andes.

As soon as refuse is thrown overboard, the albatross swoops down like an arrow.

A second before he touches the water he raises his wings, draws back his head, stretches out his large feet in front with expanded claws, and then plumps down screaming, into the water.

He floats as lightly as a cork.

In a moment he has swallowed all the scraps floating on the surface, and then, turning to the wind, rises to a giddy height.

The vessel happens to be carrying goods to Santiago, the capital of Chile, and casts anchor at its port town, Valparaiso.

In the background rises Aconcagua, the highest mountain of America.

Then the albatross steers out to sea to try his luck elsewhere.

Seventy miles from the coast he comes across the notable little island, Juan Fernandez, and circles round its volcanic cliffs.

For him there are no frightful precipitous ascents and descents; from his height he can see all he wishes to see.

It is otherwise with explorers.

Some cliffs are inaccessible to their feet, as Carl Skottsberg found when he went out to the island three years ago in a Chilian vessel.

He saw the cliffs 3000 feet high, and heard the surf rolling in round the island.

It was a perfect picture of wild desolation.

He found it difficult to land in a small boat.

He looked in vain for parrots, monkeys, and tortoises, but found, instead, that more than half the number of the plants on the island are such as grow on no other spot on the earth.

Among them are palms, with bright, pale-green trunks, which have been recklessly destroyed by men to make walking-sticks.

Here also are tree-ferns, and the small, delicate, climbing ferns which gracefully festoon trunks and boughs.

And here also is the last specimen of a species of sandalwood which, wonderful to relate, has found its way hither from its home in Asia.

A couple of hundred years ago it grew profusely on the island, but now it has been nearly exterminated by man's cupidity.

The red, strongly scented wood was too much in demand for fine cabinet work and other purposes.

Only one small branch now produces foliage on the last sandal-tree.

In this case it is not the last tree among many, but the last specimen of a species which is vanishing from the earth.

In a cave at the foot of a mountain, according to tradition, lived Robinson Crusoe, and from a saddle in the crest he threw longing, eager glances over the great ocean.

A memorial tablet in the cave relates that the real Crusoe, a Scotch sailor named Selkirk, lived alone on the island for four years and four months in the years 1704-1709. He went on shore of his own accord, being dissatisfied with the officers of the ship to which he belonged.

The climate was mild, the rainfall moderate, and wild goats and edible fruits served him for food.

Such is the actual fact.

How much more do we delight in the Robinson Crusoe whose story is so charmingly depicted in a romantic dress!

His vessel foundered, and he was the only man who was thrown up by the stormy waves upon the island.

There he made himself at home, wandered round the shore and through the woods, and filled a shooting-bag of banana leaves with oysters, turtle's eggs, and wild fruits.

With his simple bow he shot the animals of the forest to make himself clothes of their skins, and wild goats, which he caught and tamed, yielded him milk, from which he churned butter and manufactured cheese.

He became a fisherman, furrier, and potter, and on the height above his cave he had his chapel where he kept Sundays.

He found wild maize, and sowed, reaped, and made bread.

As years passed on, his prosperity increased, and he was a type of the whole human race, which from the rude simplicity of the savage has in the course of ages progressed to a condition of refinement and enlightenment.

When he was most at a loss for fire to prepare his food, the lightning struck a tree and set it on fire, and we remember that he then kept up his fire for a long time, never letting it go out.

He was very grieved when it at length expired, but a volcanic outbreak came to his assistance, and he lighted his fire again from the glowing lava.

He made himself a bread oven of bricks, and built himself a hut and a boat.

Once when he was away on an excursion, and lay asleep far from his dwelling, he started up in alarm at hearing some one call out his name.

It was only his own parrot, which had learned to talk, and which had searched for him, and was sitting on a bough calling out "Poor Robinson Crusoe!"

How well we remember his lonely walk to the other side of the island, when he stood petrified with fear before the print of a human foot in the sand!

For eight years he had been alone, and now he found that there were other human beings, cannibals no doubt, in the neighbourhood.

He stood, gazed, listened, hurried home, and prepared for defence.

Here, also, he is a type of peoples and states, which sooner or later awake to a perception of the necessity of defence against hostile attacks.

His suspicions give way to certainty when one day he sees a fire burning on the beach.

He runs home, draws up the ladder over the fortification round his dwelling, makes ready his weapons, climbs up to his look-out, and sees ten naked savages roasting flesh round a fire.

After a wild dance they push out their canoes and disappear.

At the fire are left gnawed human bones and skulls, and Robinson is beside himself at the sight.

At the end of the fourteenth year he is awakened one stormy night by a shot.

His heart beats fast, for now the hour of deliverance is surely at hand.

Another shot thunders through the night.

Perhaps it is a signal of distress from a ship!

He lights a huge fire to guide the crew.

When morning dawns, he finds that a ship has run on to a submerged rock and been wrecked.

No sign of the crew is visible.

But yes, a sailor lies prostrate on the sand and a dog howls beside him.

Crusoe runs up; he would like a companion in his loneliness; but however long he works with artificial respiration and other remedies, the dead will not come to life, and Robinson Crusoe sadly digs a grave for the unknown guest.

Another year passes and all the days are alike.

As he sits at his table, breaking his bread and eating fish and oysters, he has his dog, parrot, and goats as companions and gives them a share of his meal.

One day he sees from his look-out hill five boats come to the island and put to shore, and thirty savages jump on land and light a fire.

Then they bring two prisoners from a boat.

One they kill with a club.

The other runs away and makes straight towards Crusoe's dwelling.

Only two men pursue him, and Crusoe runs up to help him.

At a sign from his master, the dog rushes on one of the savages and holds him fast till he gets his death-blow, and the other meets the same fate.

Then Crusoe by signs and kindly gestures makes the prisoner understand that he has found a friend.

The poor fellow utters some incomprehensible words, and Crusoe, who has not heard a human voice for fifteen years, is delighted to hear him speak.

The other savages make off as fast as they can.

Robinson Crusoe's black friend receives the name of Friday, because he came to the island on a Friday.

In time Friday learns to speak, and brightens and relieves the life of the solitary man.

One day another wreck is stranded on the rocks, and Robinson and Friday fetch from its stores firearms and powder, tools and provisions, and many other useful things.

When eighteen long years have expired, the hero of our childhood is rescued by an English ship.

ACROSS THE PACIFIC OCEAN

The albatross is a knowing bird, or he would not follow vessels for weeks.

He knows that there is food on board, and that edible fragments are often thrown out.

But his power of observation and his knowledge are much greater than might be suspected.

He knows also of old where small storm birds take their prey, and when he finds them flying along with their catch he shoots down like lightning among them, appropriates all he can find, and does not trouble himself in the least about the smaller birds' disappointment.

But these vultures of the sea are still cleverer in other ways.

Their forefathers have lived on the sea for thousands of years, and their senses have been developed to the greatest acuteness and perfection.

They know the regular winds, and can perceive from the colour of the water if a cold or warm sea current sweeps along below them.

If now our friend the albatross, travelling westwards over the islands of Polynesia, wishes to be carried along by the wind, he knows that he has only to keep between the Tropic of Capricorn and the equator in order to be in the belt of the south-east trade-wind.

And no doubt he has also noticed that this wind gives rise to the equatorial current which, broad and strong, sets westwards across the Pacific Ocean.

If he wishes to fly north of the equator, he receives the same help from the north-east trade-wind; but if he wanders far to the south or north of the equator, he will meet with head winds and find that the ocean current sets eastwards.

In the northern half of the Pacific Ocean this north-easterly current is called the Kuroshiwo, or "Black Salt."

It skirts the coast of Japan and runs right across to Canada.

This current is one of the favourite haunts of the albatross.

He knows further that the arrangement of winds and currents is just the same in the Atlantic.

There, however, the current running north-east is called the Gulf Stream, and it is the warm water of this stream, coming from the equator, which makes the climate of north-western Europe so mild, and prevents even the northernmost fiords of Norway from freezing in winter.

[Illustration: THE SOUTH SEAS.

] Meanwhile the albatross is on its course westwards, careless of winds and currents.

He heeds not the hardest storm, and, indeed, where could he hide himself from its violence?

His dwelling is the air.

The sea is high, and he skims just above the surface, rising to meet each wave and descending into every trough, and the tips of his wings seem to dip into the foam.

The great ocean seems dreadfully dreary and deserted.

The sun glistens on the spindrift, and the albatross is reflected in the smooth, bright roof of waves above the fairy crystal grottoes in the depths.

He rises to see whether the island he is thinking about is visible above the horizon.

Beneath him he sees the dark, white-tipped, roaring sea.

From the west, bluish-black rain-clouds sweep up and open their sluice-gates.

Is the albatross hindered in his flight by the rain which pelts violently down on his back and wings?

Well, yes, he must certainly be delayed, but he can foretell the weather with certainty enough to keep clear, and he is swift enough on the wing to make his escape when overtaken by rain.

And he can always descend, fold his pinions, and rest dancing on the waves.

The rain over, he flies higher up again and now sees Easter Island, which from an immense depth rises above the water, terribly lonely in the great ocean.

On a sloping beach he sees several monuments of stone, thirty feet high, in the form of human heads.

They mark graves, and are memorials of a long-vanished settlement.

Now there are only about 150 natives on Easter Island, and even these are doomed to extinction.

Three white men live on the island, but it is long since news was heard of them, for no vessel has touched there for several years.

Of other living things only rats, goats, fowls, and sea birds exist on the island.

At some distance to the north-east lies Sala-y-Gomez, a small island of perfectly bare rocks, only inhabited by sea-fowl, and there the albatross pays a passing visit.

Now he rises again and continues his flight westwards.

Soon he comes to a swarm of insignificant islands called the Low Archipelago.

So we name the islands, but the dark-skinned natives who by some mysterious fortune have been banished to them call them Paumotu, or "Island Cloud."

A poet could not have conceived a better name.

There lie eighty-five groups of islands, each consisting of innumerable holms.

They are really a cloud of islets, like a nebula or star mist in the sky, and this swarm is only one among many others studding all the western part of the Pacific Ocean.

Now the albatross soars round the rocks of the "Island Cloud."

He can see them easily from up above, but it is a harder matter for a vessel to make its way between the treacherous rocks and reefs.

Though they are so many, the aggregate area amounts to less than four square miles.

Almost all are formed of coral, and most of them are atolls.

Reef--building corals are small animals which extract lime from the water.

They multiply by budding, and every group forms a common clan where living and dead members rest side by side.

Coral animalculæ demand for their existence a firm, hard sea bottom, crystal-clear water, sufficient nutriment brought to them by waves and currents, and lastly a water temperature not falling below 68°.

Therefore they occur only in tropical seas and near the surface, for the water becomes colder with the depth.

At depths greater than 160 feet they are rare.

They die and increase again and again, and therefore the coral reefs grow in height and breadth, and only the height of water at ebb tide puts a limit to their upward growth.

The continual surf of the sea and stormy waves often break off whole blocks of coral limestone, which roll down and break up into sand.

With this all cavities are filled in, and thus the action of the sea helps to consolidate and strengthen the reef.

Other lime-extracting animalculæ and also seaweeds establish themselves on the reef.

In the course of time the waves throw up loose blocks on the top of the reef, so that parts of it are always above the water-level.

When the water rises during flood-tide, white foaming surf indicates the position of the reef at a long distance.

During the ebb the reef itself is exposed and the sea is quiet.

Between ebb and flood the fairway is dangerous, for there is nothing to warn a vessel, and it may run right on to a coral reef and be lost.

Reefs have various forms and lengths.

The great Barrier Reef, which lies off the north-east coast of Australia, is 1200 miles long.

When reefs form circles they are called atolls.

By means of winds, birds, and ocean currents, seeds are carried about the ocean, and strike root on any parts of the reef which lie above the level of the flood-tide.

In the fulness of time the atoll is completed, built up by animalculæ and plants.

The "Island Cloud" is the largest continuous atoll region in all the world.

There the circular coral islands lie like a collection of garlands thrown down upon the sea.

Within them the water may be as much as 230 feet deep, and in the lagoons of some atolls all the fleets of the world could find room.

The minute coral animalculæ have provided by their industrious labour shelter for the largest vessels.

On many of the atolls grow cocoa palms, and only then are the ring-shaped islands inhabitable.

How curious they look to one approaching on a vessel!

Only the crowns of the palms are seen above the horizon; the island, being low, is out of sight.

One might be coming to an oasis in the boundless Sahara.

At last the solid coral ground of the island comes into sight (Plate XXXVII.

).

Breakers dash against the outer side of the ring, but the lagoon within is smooth as a mirror in the lea of the corals and palms.

[Illustration: PLATE XXXVII.

A CORAL STRAND.

] Four thousand natives of Polynesian race live on the holms of the "Island Cloud," a couple of hundred on each atoll.

They gather pearls and mother-of-pearl, and barter them for European goods at a ridiculously low price.

On some islands, bread-fruit trees, pineapples, and bananas are grown.

Animal life is very poor--rats, parrots, pigeons, thrushes, and lizards--but all the richer is the life in the sea outside.

The natives are most excellent seamen, and it is hard to believe that they are lifelong prisoners on their islands.

They sail with sails of matting made by the women, and have outriggers which give stability to their boats, and they cross boldly from island to island.

What does the albatross care if the French have hoisted their tricoloured flag over the atolls of the "Island Cloud" and their nearest neighbours to the west?

He is absolute ruler over them all, and seizes his prey where he will.

Now he makes for the Society Islands, and takes a circuit round the largest of them, Tahiti, the finest and best known of all the islands in the southern sea.

There again he sees volcanoes long since extinct, grand wild cliffs thickly covered with wood, impenetrable clumps of ferns, and luxuriant grass, while down the slopes dance lively brooks to the lagoon separated from the sea by the breakwaters of the coral master-builders.

On the strand grow the ever-present cocoa palms, as distinctive of the islands of the southern sea as the date palms are of the desert regions of the Old World.

Here the weather is beautiful, a warm, equable, tropical sea climate with only three or four degrees difference between winter and summer.

The south-east trade-wind blows all the year round, and storms are rare visitors.

The rain is moderate, and fever is unknown.

The natives take a bright and happy view of life.

They deck their hair with wreaths of flowers, their gait is light and easy, and they knew no sorrow until the white man came and spoiled their life and liberty.

Now the original inhabitants of Tahiti are dying out, and are being replaced by Chinamen, Europeans, and natives from other islands to the north-west.

They still, however, till their fields, put out their fishing-canoes in the lagoon, and pull down cocoa-nuts in their season.

They still wear wreaths of flowers in their hair, a last relic of a happier existence.

Pigeons coo in the trees, and green and blue and white parrots utter their ear-piercing screams.

Horses, cattle, sheep, goats, and swine are newcomers; lizards, scorpions, flies, and mosquitoes are indigenous.

The luxuriant gardens with their natural charms Europeans have not been able to destroy, and the frigate bird, the eagle of the sea, with the tail feathers of which the chiefs of Tahiti used to decorate their heads, still roosts in the trees on the strand, and seeks its food far out in the sea.

The albatross cannot but notice the frigate bird.

He sees in him a rival.

The latter does not make such long journeys, and does not venture so far out to sea; but he is a master in the art of flying, and he is an unconscionable thief.

He follows dolphins and other fishes of prey to appropriate their catch, and forces other birds to relinquish their food when they are in the act of swallowing it.

When fishermen are out drawing up their nets, he skims so low over the boat that he may be stunned with an oar, and he is so attracted by bright and gaudy colours that he will shoot down recklessly on to the pennants of ships as they flutter in the wind, swinging to and fro with the roll of the vessel.

He soars to an immense height, like the eagle, and no telescope can match the sharpness of his eyesight.

Up aloft he can see the smallest fish disporting itself on the surface of the water.

Especially he looks out for flying-fish, and catches them in the air just as they are hovering on expanded fins above the waves, or else dives after them and seizes them down below.

When he has caught a fish he soars aloft, and if the fish does not lie comfortably in his bill he drops it, and catches it again before it reaches the water; and he will do this repeatedly until the fish is in a convenient position for swallowing.

Our far-travelled storm-bird continues his long journey westwards, and his next resting-place is the Samoa Islands, which he recognises by their lofty volcanic cliffs, their tuff and lava, their beautiful woods and waterfalls, as much as 650 feet high, and surrounded by the most luxuriant vegetation.

Over the copses of ferns, and climbing plants, and shrubs, reminding one of India, flutter beautiful butterflies.

Around their oval huts, with roof of sugar-cane leaves and the floor inside covered with cocoa mats, are seen the yellowish-brown Polynesians, of powerful build and proud bearing.

The upper parts of their bodies are bare, and they wear necklaces of shells and teeth, deck themselves with flowers and feathers, smear their bodies with cocoa oil, and tattoo themselves.

Of a peaceful and happy disposition, they, too, have been disturbed by white men, and have been forced to cede their islands to Germany and the United States.

It rains abundantly on the Samoa Islands.

Black clouds sink down towards the sea, violent waterspouts suck up the water in spiral columns which spread out above like the crowns of pine-trees, and deluges of rain come down, lasting sometimes for weeks.

Everything becomes wet and sodden, and it is useless to try to light a fire with matches.

Almost every year these islands are visited by sudden whirlwinds, which do great damage both on sea and land.

Wreckage is thrown up on the shore, fields and plantations are destroyed, leaves fly like feathers from the cocoa palms, and if the storm is one of the worst kind, the trees themselves fall in long rows as if they had been mown down by a gigantic scythe.

The albatross knows of old the course of the great steamboat liners.

He sees several steamers at the Samoa Islands, and afterwards on his flight to the Fiji Islands, and if the weather is overcast and stormy he leaves his fishing-grounds in the great ocean deserts and makes for some well-known steamer route.

For in stormy weather he can find no soft cephalopods, but from a vessel refuse is thrown out in all weathers.

He knows that the Samoa Islands are in regular communication with the Sandwich Islands, and that from these navigation routes radiate out like a star to Asia, America, and Australia.

He sails proudly past the Fiji Islands.

He does not trouble himself to make an excursion to the Solomon Islands and the world of islands lying like piers of fallen bridges on the way to the coast of Asia.

Though New Caledonia is so near on the west, he is not attracted to it, as the French use it as a penal settlement.

Rather will he trim his wings for the south, and soon he sees the mountains on the northern island of New Zealand rise above the horizon.

Among them stands Tongariro's active volcano with its seven craters, and north-east of it lies the crater lake Taupo among cliffs of pumice-stone.

North of this lake are many smaller ones, round which steam rises from hot springs, and where many fine geysers shoot up, playing like fountains.

He sees that on the southern island the mountains skirt the western coast just as in Scandinavia, that mighty glaciers descend from the eternal snow-fields, and that their streams lose themselves in most beautiful Alpine lakes.

He gives a passing glance at the lofty mountain named after the great navigator Cook, which is 12,360 feet high.

On the plains and slopes shepherds tend immense flocks of sheep.

The woods are evergreen.

In the north grow pines, whose trunks form long avenues, and whose crowns are like vaultings in a venerable cathedral.

There grow beeches, and tree-ferns, and climbing plants; but the palms come to an end half-way down the southern island, for the southernmost part of the island is too cold for them.

Formerly both islands were inhabited by Maoris.

They tattooed the whole of their bodies in fine and tasteful patterns, but were cannibals and stuck their enemies' heads on poles round their villages.

Now there are only forty thousand of them left, and even these are doomed to extinction through white men--as in the struggle between the brown and black rats.

Formerly the Maoris stalked about with their war clubs over their shoulders; now they work as day labourers in the service of the whites.

At last our albatross rises high above the coast and speeds swiftly southwards to the small island of Auckland.

There he meets his mate, and for several days they are terribly busy in making ready their nest.