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"With that the rolling sea resounding soft
In his big base them fitly answered,
And on the Rock, the waves breaking aloft,
A solemn meane unto them measured."

"Then he the boteman bad row easily,
And let him heare some part of that rare melody."

"Suddeinly an innumerable flight
Of harmefull fowles about them fluttering cride, And with their wicked
wings them oft did smight
And sore annoyed, groping in that griesly night."

"Even all the nation of unfortunate
And fatal birds about them flocked were."

To go up into a high stone tower is not only a very fine thing in itself,
but the very best mode of gaining a comprehensive view of the region round
about. It is all the better if this tower stand solitary and alone, like
that mysterious Newport one, or else be sole survivor of some perished
castle.

Now, with reference to the Enchanted Isles, we are fortunately supplied
with just such a noble point of observation in a remarkable rock, from its
peculiar figure called of old by the Spaniards, Rock Rodondo, or Round
Rock. Some two hundred and fifty feet high, rising straight from the sea
ten miles from land, with the whole mountainous group to the south and
east, Rock Rodondo occupies, on a large scale, very much the position which
the famous Campanile or detached Bell Tower of St. Mark does with respect
to the tangled group of hoary edifices around it.

Ere ascending, however, to gaze abroad upon the Encantadas, this sea tower
itself claims attention. It is visible at the distance of thirty miles,
and, fully participating in that enchantment which pervades the group, when
first seen afar invariably is mistaken for a sail. Four leagues away, of a
golden, hazy noon, it seems some Spanish admiral's ship, stacked up with
glittering canvas. Sail ho! Sail ho! Sail ho! from all three masts. But
coming nigh, the enchanted frigate is transformed apace into a craggy keep.

My first visit to the spot was made in the gray of the morning. With a view
of fishing, we had lowered three boats, and, pulling some two miles from
our vessel, found ourselves just before dawn of day close under the
moonshadow of Rodondo. Its aspect was heightened, and yet softened, by the
strange double twilight of the hour. The great full moon burnt in the low
west like a half-spent beacon, casting a soft mellow tinge upon the sea
like that cast by a waning fire of embers upon a midnight hearth; while
along the entire east the invisible sun sent pallid intimations of his
coming. The wind was light, the waves languid; the stars twinkled with a
faint effulgence; all nature seemed supine with the long night-watch, and
half-suspended in jaded expectation of the sun. This was the critical hour
to catch Rodondo in his perfect mood. The twilight was just enough to
reveal every striking point, without tearing away the dim investiture of
wonder.

From a broken, stairlike base, washed as the steps of a water palace by the
waves, the tower rose in entablatures of strata to a shaven summit. These
uniform layers, which compose the mass, form its most peculiar feature. For
at their lines of junction they project flatly into encircling shelves,
from top to bottom, rising one above another in graduated series. And as
the eaves of any old barn or abbey are alive with swallows, so were all
these rocky ledges with unnumbered seafowl. Eaves upon eaves, and nests
upon nests. Here and there were long birdlime streaks of a ghostly white
staining the tower from sea to air, readily accounting for its saillike
look afar. All would have been bewitchingly quiescent were it not for the
demoniac din created by the birds. Not only were the eaves rustling with
them, but they flew densely overhead, spreading themselves into a winged
and continually shifting canopy. The tower is the resort of aquatic birds
for hundreds of leagues around. To the north, to the east, to the west,
stretches nothing but eternal ocean; so that the man-of-war hawk coming
from the coasts of North America, Polynesia, or Peru, makes his first land
at Rodondo. And yet, though Rodondo be terra firma, no land bird ever
lighted on it. Fancy a red robin or a canary there! What a falling into the
hands of the Philistines when the poor warbler should be surrounded by such
locust-flights of strong bandit birds, with long bills cruel as daggers.

I know not where one can better study the natural history of strange
seafowl than at Rodondo. It is the aviary of Ocean. Birds light here which
never touched mast or tree; hermit-birds, which ever fly alone;
cloud-birds, familiar with unpierced zones of air.

Let us first glance low down to the lowermost shelf of all, which is the
widest, too, and but a little space from high-water mark. What outlandish
beings are these? Erect as men, but hardly as symmetrical, they stand all
round the rock like sculptured caryatides, supporting the next range of
eaves above. Their bodies are grotesquely misshapen, their bills short,
their feet seemingly legless; while the members at their sides are neither
fin, wing, nor arm. And truly neither fish, flesh, nor fowl is the penguin;
as an edible, pertaining neither to Carnival nor Lent; without exception
the most ambiguous and least lovely creature yet discovered by man. Though
dabbling in all three elements, and indeed possessing some rudimental
claims to all, the penguin is at home in none. On land it stumps; afloat it
sculls; in the air it flops. As if ashamed of her failure, Nature keeps
this ungainly child hidden away at the ends of the earth, in the Straits of
Magellan, and on the abased sea-story of Rodondo.

But look, what are yon woebegone regiments drawn up on the next shelf
above? what rank and file of large strange fowl? what sea Friars of Orders
Gray? Pelicans. Their elongated bills, and heavy leathern pouches suspended
thereto, give them the most lugubrious expression. A pensive race, they
stand for hours together without motion. Their dull, ashy plumage imparts
an aspect as if they had been powdered over with cinders. A penitential
bird, indeed, fitly haunting the shores of the clinkered Encantadas,
whereon tormented Job himself might have well sat down and scraped himself
with potsherds.

Higher up now we mark the gony, or gray albatross, anomalously so called,
an unsightly, unpoetic bird, unlike its storied kinsman, which is the
snow-white ghost of the haunted Capes of Hope and Horn.

As we still ascend from shelf to shelf, we find the tenants of the tower
serially disposed in order of their magnitude: gannets, black and speckled
haglets, jays, sea hens, sperm-whale birds, gulls of all varieties --
thrones, princedoms, powers, dominating one above another in senatorial
array; while, sprinkled over all, like an ever-repeated fly in a great
piece of broidery, the stormy petrel or Mother Cary's chicken sounds his
continual challenge and alarm. That this mysterious hummingbird of ocean --
which, had it but brilliancy of hue, might, from its evanescent liveliness,
be almost called its butterfly, yet whose chirrup under the stern is
ominous to mariners as to the peasant the deathtick sounding from behind
the chimney jamb -- should have its special haunt at the Encantadas,