e; but it was decided that more than a week
should never be allowed to pass without some one going to it.

Traps were again set, and the machines manufactured by Harding were
tried. The bent whalebones, imprisoned in a case of ice, and covered
with a thick outer layer of fat, were placed on the border of the
forest at a spot where animals usually passed on their way to the
lake.

To the engineer's great satisfaction, this invention, copied from the
Aleutian fishermen, succeeded perfectly. A dozen foxes, a few wild
boars, and even a jaguar, were taken in this way, the animals being
found dead, their stomachs pierced by the unbent bones.

An incident must here be related, not only as interesting in itself,
but because it was the first attempt made by the colonists to
communicate with the rest of mankind.

Gideon Spilett had already several times pondered whether to throw
into the sea a letter enclosed in a bottle, which currents might
perhaps carry to an inhabited coast, or to confide it to pigeons.

But how could it be seriously hoped that either pigeons or bottles
could cross the distance of twelve hundred miles which separated the
island from any inhabited land? It would have been pure folly.

But on the 30th of June the capture was effected, not without
difficulty, of an albatross, which a shot from Herbert's gun had
slightly wounded in the foot. It was a magnificent bird, measuring ten
feet from wing to wing, and which could traverse seas as wide as the
Pacific.

Herbert would have liked to keep this superb bird, as its wound would
soon heal, and he thought he could tame it; but Spilett explained to
him that they should not neglect this opportunity of attempting to
communicate by this messenger with the lands of the Pacific; for if
the albatross had come from some inhabited region, there was no doubt
but that it would return there so soon as it was set free.

Perhaps in his heart Gideon Spilett, in whom the journalist sometimes
came to the surface, was not sorry to have the opportunity of sending
forth to take its chance an exciting article relating the adventures
of the settlers in Lincoln Island. What a success for the authorised
reporter of the _New York Herald_, and for the number which should
contain the article, if it should ever reach the address of its
editor, the Honourable John Benett!

Gideon Spilett then wrote out a concise account, which was placed in a
strong waterproof bag, with an earnest r