The boat came back with the news that a possible landing-place had been found, and the landing parties got off about 8.30.  The landing was very bad—­a ledge of rock weathered out of the cliff to our right formed, as it were, a staging along which it was possible to pass on to a steeply shelving talus slope in front of us.  The sea being comparatively smooth, everybody was landed dry, with their guns and collecting gear.

The best account of South Trinidad is contained in a letter written by Bowers to his mother, which is printed here.  But some brief notes which I jotted down at the time may also be of interest, since they give an account of a different part of the island: 

“Having made a small depot of cartridges, together with a little fluffy tern and a tern’s egg, which Wilson found on the rocks, we climbed westward, round and up, to a point from which we could see into the East Bay.  This was our first stand, and we shot several white-breasted petrel (Oestrelata trinitatis), and also black-breasted petrel (Oestrelata arminjoniana).  Later on we got over the brow of a cliff where the petrel were nesting.  We took two nests, on each of which a white-breasted and a black-breasted petrel were paired.  Wilson caught one in his hands and I caught another on its nest; it really did not know whether it ought to fly away or not.  This gives rise to an interesting problem, since these two birds have been classified as different species, and it now looks as though they are the same.

“The gannets and terns were quite extraordinary, like all the living things there.  If you stay still enough the terns perch on your head.  In any case they will not fly off the rocks till you are two or three feet away.  Several gannets were caught in the men’s hands.  All the fish which the biologist collected to-day can travel quite fast on land.  When the Discovery was here Wilson saw a fish come out of the sea, seize a land crab about eighteen inches away and take it back into the water.

“The land crabs were all over the place in thousands; it seems probable that their chief enemies are themselves.  They are regular cannibals.

“Then we did a real long climb northwards, over rocks and tufty grass till 1.30 P.M.  From the point we had reached we could see both sides of the island, and the little Martin Vas islands in the distance.

“We found lots of little tern and terns’ eggs, lying out on the bare rock with no nest at all.  Hooper also brought us two little gannets—­all fluffy, but even at this age larger than a rook.  As we got further up we began to come across the fossilized trees for which the island is well known.

“Four or five Captain biscuits made an excellent lunch, and afterwards we started to the real top of the island, a hill rising to the west of us.  It was covered with a high scrubby bush and rocks, and was quite thick; in fact there was more vegetation here than on all the rest we had seen, and in making our way through it we had to keep calling in order to keep touch with one another.