Page:The Columbia river , or, Scenes and adventures during a residence of six years on the western side of the Rocky Mountains among various tribes of Indians hitherto unknown (Volume 1).djvu/29

 extremity of the islands, and from thence to shape his course for Cape Horn. We coasted along the shore until the 24th, with light westerly and south-westerly breezes. Albatrosses, penguins, and pintado birds were very numerous around the ship. We shot several, and took others with a hook and bait. One albatross which we caught in this manner received but little injury. It had an enormously large bill, measured eleven feet from wing to wing when extended, and kept a fierce English bull-dog at bay for half an hour.

Although the Falkland Islands occupy in the southern hemisphere a similar degree of latitude to that of Ireland in the northern, still they possess none of the characteristic fertility of the "Emerald Isle." Of grass, properly so called, there is none in those islands. In vegetable and animal productions they are also deficient; and the climate, generally speaking, is cold, variable, and stormy: yet for such a place the British empire was on the point of being involved in a war, the preparations for which cost the nation some millions!