[87] A large gannet was seen flying about the ship on the afternoon of the previous day, indicating a near approach to land: we were at that time about ninety miles distant from the island.
[88] Three lazy frigate-birds, too indolent to fish for themselves, were seen, pursuing an unfortunate sea-swallow, which had probably succeeded in capturing a fish. It is usual for these birds to pursue the gannets, and others, when returning from their fishing excursions, compelling them to disgorge their fish.
[89] Blumenbach’s Comparative Anatomy, by Lawrence and Coulson, page 76.
[90] The shark is more wary of taking the bait when unaccompanied by the pilot-fish; it will then approach, and retire, several times before it ventures to seize it; but when the little pilot is in company it will first approach the bait, (the shark waiting at some distance,) and return, as if to report; when the shark advances and seizes the bait without hesitation: this I have remarked in numerous instances.
[91] Being at first stationary, and of a dark colour, a ship passing it rapidly might have considered it as one, and reported accordingly, and such a circumstance has no doubt caused many rocks to be laid down in the charts which have actually no existence.
[92] In one of the fabulous legends of the natives of the Island of Tahiti, their island is represented “as having been a shark, originally from Raitea. Matarafau, in the east, was the head; and a place near Faaa, on the west, was the tail; the large lake Vaihiria was the ventricles or gills; while the lofty Orehena, the highest mountain in the island, probably six or seven thousand feet above the sea, was regarded as its dorsal fin; and its ventral fin was Matavai.”—Ellis’s Polynesian Researches, vol. i. page 167.
[93] I am informed by Mr. William Holderness, that in the month of October, 1828, when on a voyage from Guayaquil and Lima, in the brig Bolivar, E. Bransfield, R. N., commander, having heard rumours of war in Europe, they touched at Pernambuco, to ascertain its correctness, and left the next day, carrying the south-east trade to about 12° north latitude. After a few days calm, they got fine breezes from south-west, which carried them across the usual limits of the north-east trade, and then had nothing but light north-east winds until they reached Gibraltar.
[94] Greville’s Algæ Britannicæ, 8vo.—The figure of the Sargassum vulgare in this work is coloured far too dark, and does not seem to have been done from a recent specimen.
[95] The generic name is derived from Sargaço, or Sargazo, the Spanish name for the masses of sea-weed found floating on the surface of the ocean.
[96] Greville’s Algæ Britannicæ, 8vo. 1830. Introd. p. xii.