Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 2.djvu/280

1842

idea, and they sometimes gallantly defend the herd. The dogs were of no particular breed; they were powerfully built and fleet, appearing to have more of the Spanish pointer than any other blood in them: a cross of the Newfoundland, mastiff, bull-dog, and even coach-dog, was sufficiently obvious in one or other of the best. All were very courageous; and new ones introduced into a good pack take instinctively to the habits of the old. It is very seldom that they will attack a full-grown bull, which is not wonderful, for the old Falkland Islands' 'Tauro' is the largest of its race: its neck is short and of prodigious depth: the skin of one we killed was upwards of two inches in thickness, and its head half as large again as that of an ordinary bull: they are generally black, have a noble carriage, and are possessed of indomitable courage and untameable ferocity. Specimens of these dimensions are however rare and do not mix with the other cattle, though sometimes attending them. More frequently they are seen solitary on the hills, with erect crests and distended nostrils, looking defiance at the passing traveller, and sometimes flying at him unprovoked; when he must betake himself to a bog, a 'stream of stones,' or cliff. Should no such refuge be nigh, the last resource is, (as I am told by those whom I believe to have practised the ruse,) to drop suddenly on the ground; when the bull starts aside from the unwonted obstacle in its path and pursues its onward course. When provoked and infuriated on open ground there is no escape even thus: the brave gunner of the 'Erebus' was struck down and the turf torn up in furrows on each side of his body by the diverging horns of a wounded and maddened bull; and my friend Capt. Sulivan bears the mark of a wound on his head which he received under precisely similar circumstances: in both these instances the animals were providentially shot before returning to gore.

"The cows are of the size of the ordinary Ayrshire stock: they invariably flee man, and seldom offer any effectual