But in the uncomfortably calm Pacific, where I watched the flying-fish every day, and often all day long, I had ample opportunity to observe its so-called ‘flying.’ The species that tenant the two oceans are very nearly allied, Exocetus volitans being the one common to the Pacific; but it is of habits I wish to treat, not of minute specific distinctions—that can be settled in the studio. It seems to me that the distance traversed when the fish leaps from the sea, and the length of time it remains out of the water, are much overestimated in books on Natural History. Ten or twelve seconds may be taken as the average time of its flight, and eighty yards the maximum distance traversed when the water is perfectly tranquil; if aided by a breeze of wind, or propelled from the crest of a breaker, the distance accomplished would necessarily be greater; but the fins have no power to raise the fish a single inch above the level of its leap, and simply aid in its support, as the extended skin of the flying-squirrel bears it up in its spring from bough to bough. I have never seen the fins vibrated or flapped, as all wings invariably are, but, stiff and rigid, are extended and still, until the fish plunges into the sea. Numbers, beyond all computation, were constantly seen by us in the air together, when chased by predatory fish. The flying-fish, as a rule, is about twelve inches in length.
We caught several sharks, and an immense hammerhead (Zygaena vulgaris), that we could not catch, followed us for a very long time. As I looked at him sailing along under the stern of the ship, I was at a loss to imagine for what purpose such a head was given to it; exactly like an immense caulking-hammer, with an eye in each end; in every other detail of shape, and in habits of voracity too, as far as I know, it resembles the ordinary sharks. That it is so constructed to serve some special purpose in its economy there can be no doubt, but what that may be, remains to be discovered. We fished for albatross with marked success, to be devoured by both men and officers, stuffed as a goose; the rag from off the bung of a cask of whale-oil, rubbed with an onion and chewed, would be mildly flavoured as compared to the flesh of this sea-bird. Petrels were ever with us, like flights of martins round the habitations of man; always on the wing, never resting, or roosting either, as far as I could see; watch them in their easy graceful flight, till the last lingering ray of light sank away beneath the watery horizon; and, as night wrapped them in her sable mantle, they were still on the wing. Be on deck as the first blush of early dawn crept drowsily over the sleeping sea, and with the rosy light came the petrels, still flying, as they had vanished in the darkness. We tried to catch them by loosing long threads over the stern, and tangling them, like human spiders; we did trap one, but the sailors were mutinous at such unheard-of barbarity; injuring the chickens of ‘Mother Carey’ was an offence not to be tolerated, even in a zealous naturalist; so, at the captain’s request, the cotton webs were abandoned. The one taken was the black stormy petrel, Thalassidroma melania (C. Buonaparte): upper plumage entirely black (as are the wing-coverts), below ferruginous; tail deeply forked, and very short.
It is a well-marked species, and readily distinguished from all its kindred by the absence of white on the rump and wing-coverts. We caught a huge turtle with a hook and line: a number of lines were hanging from the bow, the ship almost still, when there was a tremendous hue-and-cry that a turtle was hooked. To hold him with the line would have been an utter impossibility—he could have smashed it like pack-thread. The barbed trident called ‘a grains’ was brought into immediate requisition, and from the ‘dolphin-striker’ an experienced hand sent it crashing through the turtle’s armour-plates; a boat was lowered, tackle rigged, and the ponderous reptile safely deposited on the deck. The species I was unable to determine, for I had barely time to seize the sucking-fish (Remora) that were clinging to its shell in clusters, and observe the curious beings, parasitic and others, that evidently used the turtle as a living raft, on which to cruise about, ere the remorseless cook, armed with knife, axe, and saw, hewed and hacked the monster, I could have devoted days to examine, into junks for the pot. The harvest gleaned from his shell I shall speak of in the chapter on Fishes.
All our fresh provisions had long been expended, and water reduced to a very small supply per diem, when on the 11th of July, the seventieth day at sea, ‘land on the starboard bow’ was an announcement welcome to all. Being near dark, it was deemed advisable to stand off until morning, and enter the Straits of Juan de Fuca with a good light. It appeared a longer night than I ever remember, so impatient was I once more to see and tread on terra firma; what in the mist and distance seemed but a dark undefined shadow, was in reality the lighthouse, standing grey and lonely on the wild wave-lashed rocks of Cape Flattery. The wind was dead aft, and blowing freshly, as we dashed up the straits, faster far than we had ever gone during the long tedious voyage.
Nowhere is this curious inlet more than twelve miles in width: on the right, seen over an ocean of dark-green forest, sloping to the shore, were the snowy summits of the Olympian range of mountains; on the left the more rounded and lower metamorphic hills, quite as densely timbered, but broken along the coast-line into open glades and grassy slopes, like well-kept lawns, reaching to the water-line. About sixty miles from the entrance we round the dreaded ‘race rocks,’ and with scarce time for even a hasty look at the new land, glide round a rocky point, on which is a house, and people anxiously watching our movements. The sails are clewed up; orders are rapidly given, and as quickly executed. A heavy plunging splash and the rattle of the massive cable, as it crashes through the hawse-holes, proclaim our anchorage in Esquimalt Harbour, and safe arrival at Vancouver Island.
CHAPTER II.
VICTORIA—THE SALMON: ITS HAUNTS AND HABITS.
We were landed, soon after our arrival, on a rocky point of land with a snug sheltered bay on each side; an easy slope led up to the frame of a house, destined to be our headquarters; a pretty spot, very Englishlike in its general features, but in the rough clothing of uncultivated nature. Tents were pitched, the baggage carried safely up and stowed away, and the first camp of the Boundary Commission established in this new land of promise.
Our first walk to Victoria, now the thriving capital of Vancouver Island, was made on the evening of our landing. The gold-fever was just beginning to rage fast and furiously, and all classes, from every country, were pouring in—a very torrent of gold-hunters. Not that gold-hunter means only he that digs and washes the yellow ore from out Nature’s treasury, but includes a herd of parasites, that sap the gains of the honest digger; tempting him to gamble, drink poison (miscalled whisky), and purchase trashy trumpery, made, like Pindar’s razors, only to sell; and thus fool away his wealth; ‘earned like a horse, squandered like an ass!’ Both species were well represented, in what could not, in any sense of the word, as yet be called a town.