Six Letters From the ColoniesSeaton, R. C. (Robert Cooper)
History
Six Letters From the Colonies
Seaton, R. C. (Robert Cooper)
Australia -- Description and travel
I must say we were badly treated by the "monsters of the deep." They
never came out when wanted. We all expected to catch a shark some
day, but only once was one even seen, and then it was some distance
off, with its knife-like fin just showing above the water. It was
Sunday, too, when no fishing was allowed--a fact of which he was
evidently aware. These fellows are proverbially stupid, and will go
at a bait again and again, even though they must know it to be a
lure. Only once, too, did we catch an albatross, _the_ bird of the
Southern Ocean. That was by a line baited with a small piece of
pork. This was fastened to a round ring of iron, in which the hooked
beak of the bird caught, and so it was dragged on board. The captain
knocked it on the head, and it was then cut up. It measured 13 feet
across the wings, but many are larger than this. The beak was about
6 inches long, curved, and of great power. Sailors have no "ancient
mariner" sentiment as to killing the albatross--in fact, it would be
misplaced. The captain told us of a case he knew of where a man had
fallen overboard, when the albatrosses swooped down upon him, and
pecked out his eyes and brains. The sailors begged the captain to
shoot him and so end his sufferings. The quills of the albatross
make excellent pipe stems, and the skin of the webbed feet is used
for tobacco pouches. But the chief thing about the bird is, of
course, the snowy down on the breast, of which ladies' muffs are
made. The Zoological Society in Regent's Park offer a reward of L100
for a live albatross or black cockatoo, but it has never been
earned, though the attempt to carry them to England has often been
made, for the albatross cannot live through the tropics.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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