Page:Early voyages to Terra Australis.djvu/300

 144 dampier's voyages.

and fragrant, as did some also of the rest. There were also beside some plants, herbs, and tall flowers, some very small flowers growing on the ground, that were sweet and beau- tiful, and for the most part unlike any I had seen else- where.^

There were but few land fowls ; we saw none but eagles, of the larger sorts of birds, but five or six sorts of small birds. The biggest sort of these were not bigger than larks, some no bigger than wrens, all singing with great variety of fine shrill notes; and we saw some of their nests with young ones in them. The water fowls are ducks (which had young ones now, this being the beginning of the spring in these parts), curlews, galdens, crab-catchers, cormorants, gulls, pelicans, and some water fowl, such as I have not seen any where besides.

The land animals that we saw here were only a sort of raccoons, different from those of the West Indies, chiefly as to their legs ; for these have very short fore legs, but go jumping upon them as the others do (and like them are very good meat) ; and a sort of guanos, of the same shape and size with other guanos, describ'd (vol. i, p. 57), but differ- ing from them in three remarkable particulars : for these had a larger and uglier head, and had no tail, and at the rump, instead of the tail there, they had a stump of a tail, which appear'd like another head ; but not really such, being without mouth or eyes : yet this creature seem'd by this means to have a head at each end, and, which may be

^ In Dr. Brown's Prodromus Florce Novce TlollandicB et Insvlce Van Diemen, occurs the following under the family of Goodenovi^ : " Genus Scjevolae et Diaspasi propinquum, sed ab iisdem sat distinctum, dixi in memoriam Gulielmi Dampier, navarchi et peregrinatoris celeberrimi, in variis suis itineribus naturae semper assidui observatoris, nee botanicem negligentis, qui oram occidentalem Nova: HoUandia; bis visitavit, cujus regionis plantas aliquse depicts in relatione itineris extant, et inter ineditas secum reportatas (quarum plures nunc in Museo Oxoniensi asservantur) Dampiera incana fuit.