It was in March, 1898, that my best assistant and I boarded the little sloop which was to take us to Pelican Island. Fortunately the birds were now in possession of their ancestral domain, and, as we approached, files of Pelicans were seen returning from fishing expeditions, platoons were resting on the sandy points, some were bathing, others sailing in broad circles high overhead. Soon we could hear the sound of many voices—a medley of strange cries in an unknown tongue. Arriving and departing on wings, the inhabitants of Pelican Island have little need of deep water harbors, and we were obliged to anchor our sloop about a hundred yards from the island and go ashore in a small boat. [Illustration: 101. Pelicans on ground nests.] No traveler ever entered the gates of a foreign city with greater expectancy than I felt as I stepped from my boat on the muddy edge of this City of the Pelicans. The old birds, without a word of protest, deserted their homes, leaving their eggs and young at my mercy. But the young were as abusive and threatening as their parents were silent and unresisting. Some were on the ground, others in the bushy mangroves, some were coming from the egg, others were learning to fly; but one and all—in a chorus of croaks, barks, and screams, which rings in my ears whenever I think of the experience—united in demanding that I leave the town. If I approached too near, their cries were doubled in violence and accompanied by vicious lunges with their bills, which were snapped together with a pistol-like report.^{102} As I walked from tree to tree, examining the noisy young birds that were climbing about the branches, I seemed to be passing from cage to cage in a zoölogical garden; and as I entered that part of the island where the nests were on the ground,^{101} every bird that could walk left its home, and soon I was driving a great flock of young Pelicans, all screaming at the tops of their voices. [Illustration: 102. Interviewing a group of young Pelicans.] [Illustration: 103. Among the Pelicans.] The old birds, in the meantime, were resting on the water. They might have been unpleasant foes, but in their stately, dignified way they accepted the situation, and waited in silence for us to retire. Then they at once returned to their nests, and in a short time comparative quiet was restored on the island. This is a sketch of life in the Pelicans’ metropolis as one sees it during a brief visit, and all the accounts of the island I have seen were based on just such an experience. Consequently, I shall relate here what was learned of the Pelicans and their home during four days passed with them. [Illustration: 104. Head and pouch of Brown Pelican. From a fresh specimen.]