rill whistle
were half deafening as they mingled in direst discord. Big white
sea-gulls in myriads flew fearlessly in and out among the shipping,
uttering defiant screams, or floated like corks upon the water alongside
of the ship. In no other part of the world are there so many snow-white
sea-gulls to be seen as frequent this spacious and charming bay. They
are large, graceful, dignified birds, and are never molested, being
looked upon as picturesque ornaments to the harbor; besides which they
are the most active sort of scavengers in removing the floating carrion
and the debris thrown from the wharves and the cook's galley. The gulls
one sees off the coast of Norway and among the Loffoden Islands are
thousands in number, but they are not nearly so large as are these
bird-monarchs of the Pacific. Their rank, fishy flavor renders them
unfit for the table, though the Chinamen about the wharves secretly
snare and eat them. Their breeding-places are not known, but they must
be hundreds of miles away on unfrequented rocks and reefs. Distance,
however, is of little account to these buoyant navigators of the
atmosphere.

One of the ship's officers told us of a sea-gull which was caught within
the last year just off the Golden Gate, and detained for a brief period
on board a steamship bound for Japan. A short piece of red tape was
securely tied to one of its legs, after which the bird was released.
This identical gull followed the ship across the Pacific into the harbor
of Yokohama,--a distance of over four thousand miles. Until this
experiment was tried, it had been doubted whether the same individual
birds continue with a ship on a long voyage as they seem to do. "You
will see the albatross as we get down south," continued the officer, "a
bird worth watching, the largest of the gull family, frequently
measuring across its outspread wings twelve feet from tip to tip." We
resolved to be on the lookout for this king-bird, though rather doubting
the mammoth proportions attributed to him.

By turning to a map of the Western Hemisphere it will be found that the
Sandwich Islands are located far up in the northeastern part of the
Pacific Ocean, whence a vessel laying her course for New Zealand steers
south by west through a long tract of ocean, seemingly so full of
islands that the inexperienced are apt to wonder how she can hold such a
course and not run foul of some of the Polynesian groups. But so vast
are the distances in Ocea