It had been arranged that we were to rejoin the schooner on the evening of this day, at a point of land running out from an island a little to the west of where we now were, unless the weather should prove bad; in which case she was to come in for us.  The weather, however, was very fine, so making sail we stood across the channel.  The station to which she had gone was three or four miles further to the south.  The water was very clear, and as we passed through the kelp we looked down in some places where it grew less thickly, and could see its vast stems and branches, with their huge leaves, springing up from the depth of many fathoms, like a forest of submarine oaks or Spanish chestnuts.  We were amused with the flight of some of the ducks we put up.  Mr Burkett called them loggerheads, racers, or steamers.  Their wings will not lift them from the water, but whirling them round and round, they went scuttling and waddling away over the surface at a rapid rate, generally two and two--the loving husband and his wife--leaving a deep furrow in the water behind them.  We burst into fits of laughter at the ridiculous manner in which they moved.  They are fat and fishy, and not at all fit for food.  I never expected to have seen more birds together than we had passed at the rookery under the cliffs in the morning; but we sailed by an island, of which birds of all descriptions had taken entire possession.  There were various species of ducks, and geese, and snipe, and teal, and shags, and grebes, and penguins, and albatrosses, and sea-rooks, and oyster-catchers, and gulls with pink breasts, and many others, of whose names I have no note.  As we believed that we had plenty of time, we landed near some cliffs to have a nearer look at them.  So tame were they that we could knock down as many as we liked with our sticks; but it was murderous work, and as we did not want them to eat--indeed many were not fit for eating--we soon desisted from it.