supervise the working on these and the smaller neighboring islands. None of them are men of any very great intelligence, but they manage to keep a log-book or diary, in which daily occurrences as well as the amount of labor performed are noted down.

The stores and medicines are also under their charge. Under no circumstances is any liquor allowed on the islands, a severe privation to many of the men, who have sometimes been known to drink, with great gusto, paregoric, Friar's balsam, and other medicina remedies containing alcohol.

Halifax Island is about thirty miles farther north, and within a very short distance of the German settlement at Angra Pequeña. There were five men here the headman an Italian, and the others hailing from France, Sweden, St. Helena, and Capetown respectively. The quarters are very poor; but the storeroom contained an ample supply of salt-beef, biscuits, meal, and other necessaries. The absence of fresh meat and vegetables is sorely felt, and at times leads to attacks of scurvy among the men. To a flagstaff, from which floats the Union Jack, an old, weatherbeaten board is affixed, bearing the inscription: "Halifax Island: taken possession of by Capt. C. C. Forsyth, of H.M.S. Valorous, May 7, 1866, in the name of Her Britannic Majesty Queen Victoria. God save the Queen."

On Diaz Point, close by, is a rough wooden beacon; formerly there was a marble cross erected by the famous navigator, Bartholomew Diaz. The pedestal was in its place in 1825, but the whole of this interesting landmark has now disappeared.

Seal and Penguin Islands, both small in extent, lie just at the entrance to Angra Pequeña Bay, the latter being almost entirely the abode of the guillemot, a black bird with a patch of white feathers on the back, and about the size of a wild duck. At the time of my visit there was nobody on this island, but a small stock of provisions is kept in a wooden shanty for the benefit of the men who come at intervals to collect the guano. Still farther to the north lies Ichaboe, an island composed of granite, slate, and quartz, a little less than a mile in circumference, and

distant something over half-a-mile from the mainland. In former days large numbers of vessels anchored here to load the fertilizing ordure, which once rose, it is said, to a height of seventyfive feet, the deposit probably of centuries. The island itself lies low, and is not at any point more than thirty feet high. It would be difficult to find in hazy weather were it not for a conspicuous spar placed at the southern end, and bearing an inscription rendered well-nigh illegible through time and atmospherical conditions: "Notice. This island of Ichaboe is this day taken possession of for and in the name of Her Britannic Majesty Queen Victoria; and is hereby declared a dependency of (Signed)

Captain, H.M.S. Furious. June 21, 1861. All claims as to soil or territory in Ichaboe are to be made to His Excellency the Governor of the Cape of Good Hope. God save the Queen.' Many graves are to be seen here, one of them containing the remains of a Scotsman who for no less than thirty-nine years made the island his home. At another spot part of a skeleton is to be seen, the rocky nature of the ground. not allowing of very effectual interment. In striking contrast with the silent home of the dead is the animation displayed by the feathered inhabitants, whose graceful movements and busy activity one might watch for hours without tiring.

After quitting Ichaboe, the coastline. for some little distance assumes a bolder aspect, and Dolphin Head, the southern extremity of Spencer Bay, is a very prominent headland, a massive wall of rock rising abruptly and almost perpendicularly from the water's edge to 600 or 700 feet in height, against which the sea beats with great violence.

About a mile and a half from the mainland lies Mercury Island, a gigantic rock, conical in form, with a length north and south of about half-a-mile. The highest point is 160 feet above the sea-level, and from this eminence an extensive view is obtained, the general physical aspect not only of the island but of the contiguous continent being indicative of an extensive volcanic convulsion of nature at some remote period of the world's history. Here,

again, life and death are significantly contrasted, one of the first objects that strike the eye on landing being the laconic epitaph painted on the smooth face of the rock: "C. Abrahams, died 2d July 1890." This island is of surpassing interest to lovers of Nature in her sterner mood; and many hours might be enjoyably spent in exploring its recesses, one of the principal points being an immense fissure or tunnel which bisects the rock, opening out at one place into a huge arched chamber, a hundred feet high or more, the sides of which have been carved and fashioned into weird and fantastic shapes, while beneath sea-anemones of lovely hues, and other singular marine specimens, fascinate the eye. The guano on Mercury lies in thick profusion in many parts, as it has not been collected for more than a twelvemonth; indeed, a considerable quantity is being washed away by the sea, which in heavy weather submerges the low-lying portions. The accommodation is of the poorest and most meagre description, and fast going to decay; the marvel is

how human beings can ever manage to exist in such a miserable hovel. Hollamsbird Island is seventy-five miles farther up the coast, and is the most isolated of the group, as it lies nine miles from the mainland. This also is the home of innumerable flocks of seabirds; and as many as fourteen hundred fur-seals have been captured at one time, the custom being to club them on the head. They are very easily frightened away from their haunts, and can even detect a steamer's smoke a long distance off. Sealing operations in these parts have been suspended for some time past.

In addition to the islands comprised in the Ichaboe group, there are some others nearer the Cape peninsula which go by the name of the Colonial Islands. Not only do they contribute largely to. the guano supply, but a considerable revenue accrues also from the sale of penguin eggs, which are much appreciated, the privilege of collecting them being put up to tender annually by the government.-Chambers's Journal.

IN southern lands-and most lands are southern to us-the road runs between fragrant hedge-rows or under shady trees, but in Orcady trees and hedges are practically unknown. Yet the road lacks not its charm, for this is a world of compensations. If we never breathe the fragrance of the may or hear the whisper of wind-stirred branches, we have, on the other hand, nothing to shut out from our eyes the wide expanse of land and sea or to hide the blue sky over us; no fallen timber after a gale to block our way and make of our progress an involuntary obstacle race, and no thorns to puncture our cycle tires. The lover of the highway may miss here much of the bird-life that enlivens the roads of the South, but our road has a life and traffic of its own quite apart from the trickling stream of men and horses which flows fitfully

along its white channel. Flowers and flies, birds and beasts, the road has something for each and all of them. Even by day they use it, but from dusk to dawn they claim it as their very own.

For

I do not remember that Stevenson, who so loved the road, has written anywhere of its little life, of the birds and beasts, the shy living things that haunt it. In the treeless Isles of Oready, at least, the furred and feathered creatures seem to think that man makes the road for their especial delectation. all creatures of beach and bog, of hill and meadow, it has its charms, and hence it is ever beat upon by soft, soundless feet and shadowed by swiftly moving wings, and many a little comedy or tragedy is played out upon its stage. We walk upon it in spring and summer through an air fragrant with the perfume of innumerable small

sweet flowers, with the music of birds and bees about us, and ever, under and behind all song, the voice of the great sea, full of indefinable mystery, as of a half-remembered dream.

The engineer who makes the road unwittingly plans it in such fashion as to be of service to the folk of moor and marsh, of shore and furrow. In Orcady every road, sooner or later, leads to the sea. In former days the sea itself was the great highway, and, therefore, close to its shores are found the old kirks and kirkyards. For by sea men came to worship God, and by sea they were carried to their long home. The kirks and kirkyards being beside the sea the road comes thither to them. It comes down also to the piers, the slips and jetties, which play so important a part in the lives of islanders. Thus the road passes within a few yards of the haunts of all the divers, swimmers, and waders that frequent our shores.

Also in making a road the aim of the man who plans it is to avoid, so far as possible, all ascents and descents. In carrying out this aim he raises the road on embankments where it passes through low and marshy grounds, and makes cuttings through the higher lands. Where it runs through such a cutting the roadside ditches catch and keep a little store of water in a dry season, and thither plover, snipe, redshanks and dotterel bring their velvetclad birdlings to drink. If the season be wet, the road raises above the marsh a comparatively dry platform, on which the birds may rest when not feeding, and the roadside dikes offer a shelter from wind and sun.

But our road draws feet and wings to it in many other ways. It passes now through cultivated fields, with dry stone dikes fencing it on either side; now it runs, unfenced, through the open moorland, and again along the very margin of the sea. Here it is bordered by marshes and there by a long reach of black peat-bog, and everywhere it wooes with varied wiles the living things of earth and air. Before the dikes have seen many seasons they begin to deck themselves with velvet mosses, and to

NEW SERIES.-VOL. LXVIII., No. 4.

the miniature forests of the moss come insects of the lesser sorts, flying and creeping things, red, and brown, and blue. In pursuit of these "small

deer come the spiders, which lurk in crevices of the walls and spread their cunning snares across the mouths of culverts where farm roads branch off from the highway. Long-legged waterskaters dart to and fro among the floating weeds on the surface of the stagnant ditches. And over these ditches the midges weave their fantastic dances

on

summer evenings. The litter of passing traffic brings hurrying, busy, burnished beetles, which find harborage in the loosely piled banks of ditch scrapings that form the boundary between highway and moorland. Where the road, with its generous grassy margin, runs like a white ribbon with green borders through the brown moors, wild flowers, that are choked or hidden in the heather, spread themselves to the sunshine, primroses and daisies, cloverred and white-milk-wort and tormentil, hawkweed and violets, thyme and crowfoot, their very names read like a poem. The number of small wild flowers that grow in our roadside ditches and within reach of the road is amazing when one begins to reckon them. Here the steep grassy bank is gorgeous with rose-campion and with purple and gold of the vetches, and all the air is sweet with the perfume of wild mustard which, with the pale yellow of its blossoms, almost hides the green in that field of springing barley. This wet meadow, on either hand all aglow with the pink blossoms of the ragged robin, a little earlier in the year had its wide and shallow ditches glorified by the broad green leaves and exquisite, feathery blooms of the bog-bean, while its drier grounds were starred with the pale cups of grass of Parnassus. In spring the vernal squills shone on yonder hillocks with a blue glory as of the sea in summer. On this long flat stretch of peat-bog these are not untimely snow-drifts, but nodding patches of cotton-grass. In autumn, when a strong wind blows from that quarter, all the road will be strewn with the silvery, silken down that makes so brave a show

32

among the purple heather of the bog. Later still in the year the same bog will glow ruddy as with a perpetual sunset, when the long, coarse grass reddens. Passing this way on some gray afternoon the wayfarer will find it hard to believe that the "charmed sunset" has not suddenly shone out through the clouds "low adown in the red west." And the peat moss on which the road is built has other glories: green moss, and moss as red as blood; fairy cups of silver lichen with scarlet rims, and long reaches of bog-asphodel, shining like cloth-of-gold, and sweetening the winds with their faint delicate perfume. Here, where our road runs on a firmer foundation, grow the wild willows, all low-growing, and all adding a beauty to the year in their catkins. When the daisies have hardly ventured to thrust their heads into a cold world, the catkins gleam in silky silver, changing, as the days lengthen, to yellow gold. Later on some of them are covered with an exquisite white down, which floats their seeds about the land. The little burns which our road bridges, ripple and chatter through miniature forests of ferns and meadow-sweet; the foxglove shakes its bells above the splendor of the gorse, and the yellow iris hides the young wild duck that are making their way by ditch and brooklet to the sea. These are but a few of the flowers with which the road garlands and bedecks herself to welcome the little peoples who love her.

To the flowers come all day long in summer the humble bees. These little reddish-yellow fellows, hot and angrylooking, have their byke or nest in some mossy bank or old turf dike, to which they carry wax and honey for the fashioning of a round, irregular, dirty-looking comb. The chances are that they will be despoiled of their treasure by some errant herd-boy before July is half over. Their great cousins in black velvet striped with gold prefer to live solitary in some deserted mouse-hole, but they cannot, for all their swagger and fierce looks, save their honey from Boy the Devourer. Though there are no wasps in Orcady, the roadside blossoms have visitors other than the bees.

Here come white and brown butterflies, and those dainty little blue creatures whose wings are painted and eyed like a peacock's tail. And at night moths, white, yellow, and gray, flit like ghosts above the sleeping flowers, or dance mysteriously in the dusk on silent wings.

Where the insects come, there follow the insect-eaters. On a June evening there are parts of the road where one may see kittiwakes and black-headed gulls hawking for moths. Wheat-ears

and starlings, larks and pipits, and, more rarely, thrushes, blackbirds, and wrens, with an occasional stonechat, all come to prey on the insect life of the road. Swallows there are none in Orcady, but the ubiquitous sparrow is there. To his contented mind the road offers a continual feast. When the birds set up housekeeping in spring, many of them choose their nestingplaces in the near neighborhood of the road. It seems almost as if they argued that here, under the very eye of man, they run less risk of discovery than further afield, where he may expect to find their treasures. From crannies of the loosely built walls that bound the road you may hear the hungry broods of starlings, sparrows, and wheat-ears chirping on every side as you pass in May. I have seen a nestful of young larks gape up with their foolish yellow throats from a tuft of grass on the very edge of a roadside ditch, and have found a grouse's nest in the heather not fifty yards from the most man-frequented part of the road. Yellow-hammers, too, and other buntings often nest in the long grass by the ditch-side. Here, in a hedge of whin or gorse which crosses the road at right angles, are the nests of the thrush, the blackbird, and the wren. If you drive along our road in spring you shall see the male pewit in all the glory of his wedding garments, scraping, a few yards from the roadside, the shallow, circular hollow in which his young are to be hatched; and a little later you shall see his patient spouse look up at you fearlessly from her eggs, or even, if your passing be at noonday, you may watch her slip off the nest as her mate

comes up behind to relieve her in her domestic duties. For these birds have learned that man on wheels is not to be feared, though man on foot is one of their most dreaded enemies.

In Orcady there are not many fourfooted wild things, but those that dwell among us are drawn to the road as surely as the birds are. In the gloaming rabbits come down to the roadside clover where the bees have gathered honey all day. Great brown hares, too, come loping leisurely along the road, moving shadows that melt into the dusk at the least alarm. Hares always like to make their forms near a road of some sort, for it affords them a swift and ready means of flight when they are pursued. They must be hard pressed, indeed, before they will dive like rabbits into roadside drains or culverts, but these refuges are not to be despised when grayhound or lurcher is close upon their heels. Mice, voles, and rats find shelter in the banks of road-scrapings, or in the walls and drain-mouths, and the sea-otter does not despise the road when he makes a nocturnal expedition inland. It is not long since a man who was early afoot on a summer morning met a pair of otters almost on the street of our sleeping island capital. Seals, of course, cannot use the road, but where it runs by the sea-marge their shining heads rise up from the water to watch the passers-by, and he who is abroad before dawn may find them on the beaches within a few yards of the roadway.

The deer, roe, foxes, badgers, stoats, weasels, wild-cats, and moles of Orcady are even as the snakes of Iceland. Tame cats run wild, however, we do not lack, and they take their tithe from the road as surely as do the hawks and falcons. Neither snakes, lizards, nor frogs are found in the Isles, but on a damp autumn evening the road is dotted with toads of all sizes, which sit gazing into infinity or hop clumsily from before the passing wheel.

In pursuit of beetles, mice, and small birds, hawks and owls come to the road. The kestrel of all hawks loves it the most. He sits upon the humming telegraph wires or hangs poised, like Ma

homet's coffin, in mid-air, ever watchful and ready to swoop down upon his prey. The same wires which give him a resting-place often furnish him with food, ready killed or disabled. When first man set up his posts along the road and threaded them with an endless wire, sad havoc was wrought among the birds. Plover-green and golden-snipe, redshanks, and grouse dashing across the road in the dusk, struck the fatal wires and fell dead or maimed by the wayside. I have seen a blackbird fly shrieking from a prowling cat, and strike the wire with such force that his head, cut clean off, dropped at my very feet. The older birds appear to have learned a lesson from the misfortunes of their fellows, but every autumn young birds, new to their wings, pay their tribute of victims to the wires. More especially is this the case with the plovers, and, though the kestrel rarely touches so big a bird when it is whole and sound, he feasts upon their wounded. The hen-harrier skims to and fro along the roadside ditches, but he is a wary and cautious fowl, and is never within gun-shot of the road when man comes down that way. The merlin, that beautiful miniature falcon, glides swift and low across the moors and meadows, flashes suddenly over the roadside dike, and before the small birds have time to realize that their enemy is upon them, he is gone again, only a little puff of feathers floating slowly down the air, showing where he struck his prey. The peregrine wheels high over head, but is too proud and shy a bird to hunt upon man's roads. Nor has the road any charm for the raven, who goes croaking hoarsely over it on his way from shore to hill. The little shorteared owls hide all day among the heather near our road, and come flapping up in the gloaming on noiseless wings to take their share of its good things. In the treeless islands the kestrel is not the only bird that sits upon the wires. There the starling sings his weird love-song, mingling with his own harsh notes the calls of every other bird that the islands know. There, too, the linnets that come down to the roadside thistles sit in long rows like threaded