For the few days that we were at the Keelings we had exceptionally good weather, and we visited North Keeling Island, which is not often possible. The island is uninhabited except by birds and some other things, among which is a monstrous land crab which climbs trees and feeds on coconuts. Between the coconut palms and ironwood trees there is a dense forest covering the island, which is only about a mile long. We saw literally myriads of frigate-birds, boobies, terns, and other sea-birds, all of which nest there. I was especially interested in the frigate-birds and their nests. The birds would rise from their nests and sail in spirals to great heights, apparently very angry, inflating the red pouches on their necks as they rose. I was for seeing whether I could not find a few good eggs for my collection, but Peter dissuaded me. He thought that the birds would not take it well. As for my collection of eggs, {283} I had not begun it yet, but I thought that frigate-birds’ eggs would be a good thing to begin with. I still think so, and regret my failure to get an egg or two. No doubt, if I had got them, they would now be adorning the loft of my barn, where various collections of my son’s ornament the walls, in various stages of desiccation or decay. There are a collection of eggs, some of them rare; a collection of seaweeds and mosses, dried and mounted on cards, and lettered very beautifully; shells of crabs, likewise mounted on cards, among which are two or three shells of young horseshoe crabs about an inch or two long, very delicate and perfect; a collection of wild-flowers, dried, pressed, and mounted; a collection of lichens; and collections of various other kinds, which I forget at this moment. These collections represent different phases in my son’s development which he very promptly forgot as soon as they were past, but each of which was absorbing while it lasted. I do not look at them often, but I would not have them touched, and neither would Ann McKim. I should have been glad to stay longer, but the voyage was neither for my health, which was disgustingly rugged, nor for my pleasure, and Captain Nelson sailed for Sunda Strait without consulting me. It is not a long stretch from the Keelings to the Strait, but we were delayed and turned aside by whales, of which we saved two, both of which lay fin out within an hour from lowering. They were fairly large, and made more than one hundred and fifty barrels, and raised our stock of sperm oil on board to about twelve hundred barrels. We finished our trying-out late one afternoon, and kept off for Sunda Strait, making a beginning at our scrubbing of the ship. We were directly in the track of sailing vessels bound through the Strait to China and Japan, and very nearly in the track of steamers both ways. Sunda Strait is the narrow throat of the highway between the Indian Ocean and all the seas and ports to the east, and it is almost busy enough to need a traffic policeman. {284}