Jack laughed and said,--

"Why, Peterkin, they are penguins!"

"Penguins?" repeated Peterkin.

"Ay, penguins, Peterkin, penguins,--nothing more or less than big sea-
birds, as you shall see one of these days, when we pay them a visit in
our boat, which I mean to set about building the moment we return to our
bower."

"So, then, our dreadful yelling ghosts and our murdering army of
soldiers," remarked Peterkin, "have dwindled down to penguins,--big sea-
birds! Very good. Then I propose that we continue our journey as fast
as possible, lest our island should be converted into a dream before we
get completely round it."

Now, as we continued on our way, I pondered much over this new discovery,
and the singular appearance of these birds, of which Jack could only give
us a very slight and vague account; and I began to long to commence to
our boat, in order that we might go and inspect them more narrowly. But
by degrees these thoughts left me, and I began to be much taken up again
with the interesting peculiarities of the country which we were passing
through.

The second night we passed in a manner somewhat similar to the first, at
about two-thirds of the way round the island, as we calculated, and we
hoped to sleep on the night following at our bower. I will not here note
so particularly all that we said and saw during the course of this second
day, as we did not make any further discoveries of great importance. The
shore along which we travelled, and the various parts of the woods
through which we passed, were similar to those which have been already
treated of. There were one or two observations that we made, however,
and these were as follows:--

We saw that, while many of the large fruit-bearing trees grew only in the
valleys, and some of them only near the banks of the streams, where the
soil was peculiarly rich, the cocoa-nut palm grew in every place
whatsoever,--not only on the hill sides, but also on the sea shore, and
even, as has been already stated, on the coral reef itself, where the
soil, if we may use the name, was nothing better than loose sand mingled
with broken shells and coral rock. So near to the sea, too, did this
useful tree grow, that in many places its roots were washed by the spray
from the breakers. Yet we found the trees growing thus on the sands to
be quite as luxuriant as those growing in the valleys, and the fruit as
good and refreshing also. Besides this, I noticed that, on th