t9ce23: Il/illi(is Galap(;(( los Erp(edition


lope in correspondting places in Africa. This, too, was the only place
where we found (onolophus, the giant land lizards.
    Daphne Major, five miles to the north, was visited twice. It is a
perfect island crater, and after landing on its most inhospitable
cliffs, we climbed its precipitous sides covered with loose, easily-
sliding shale and looked (lown into the deep crater. The floor
covered with white san(l was dotted everywhere with hundreds of
nesting boobies, all of the blue-footed species. We went down and
walked about among them, collecting a chick, or an egg or an adult
here and there, and taking photographs at close range without
causing more disturbance among them than an occasional gurgling
protest. Except for one dead pelican we saw no other kind of sea-
bird on the floor of the crater, though on the outside slopes wele
numbers of nesting tropic-birds, terns, Creagrus and Galapagos gulls.
     In all our wanderings we had seen no tortoise nor traces of one
anywhere, although not so many years ago they were probably the
most usual sight on the islands. The whaling ships used to carry
thetn away by the hundred to provide a welcome change of diet on
long voyages. Oil hunters from the mainland have made great
inroads on their numbers and wild dogs and pigs have probably
accounted for numberless eggs and newly-hatched young. Where
the tortoises are not actually extinct, the survivors have evidently
betaken themselves to the craters of the interior. In 1907 it was
reported that these reptiles were most numerous on Duncan, so
five members of the expedition went to Duncan in a large motor
boat, thirty-six miles away, hoping to xe 'ify this report. They beat
over the land near the shore and much of the interior of the lesser
crater and found only one moderately large tortoise, which, after
the most exhausting labor, they managed to carry back to the boat.
it seems certain that another unique form of life is well on the
road to extinction, thanks to the efforts of man.
    Our last anchorage in the Archipelago was at Tower Island, in
Darwin Bay, a hitherto unmapped bay which we discovered and
namedl. The bay is over a mile square, with deep water up to the
very foot of the high cliffs with which it is surrounded. Our one
landing beach was extraordinarily beautiful and interesting, fronting
a nesting place for hundreds of frigate-birds, boobies, gulls, doves
and other nati\ e birds, as tame as we had come to expect all the
creatures of these islands to be. Here were also deep pools and


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