All in all, we enjoyed a highly satisfactory state of health.
The diet on board agreed with us perfectly, and for my part,
I could easily have gone without those changes of pace that Ned Land,
in a spirit of protest, kept taxing his ingenuity to supply us.
What's more, in this constant temperature we didn't even have to
worry about catching colds. Besides, the ship had a good stock of
the madrepore Dendrophylia, known in Provence by the name sea fennel,
and a poultice made from the dissolved flesh of its polyps will
furnish an excellent cough medicine.
For some days we saw a large number of aquatic birds with webbed feet,
known as gulls or sea mews. Some were skillfully slain, and when cooked
in a certain fashion, they make a very acceptable platter of water game.
Among the great wind riders--carried over long distances from every
shore and resting on the waves from their exhausting flights--
I spotted some magnificent albatross, birds belonging to the Longipennes
(long-winged) family, whose discordant calls sound like the braying
of an ass. The Totipalmes (fully webbed) family was represented
by swift frigate birds, nimbly catching fish at the surface,
and by numerous tropic birds of the genus Phaeton, among others
the red-tailed tropic bird, the size of a pigeon, its white plumage
shaded with pink tints that contrasted with its dark-hued wings.
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