He rolled over and plunged into the water, but in less than half an hour had taken his former station and attitude.

On firing again, a stream of blood spouted forth from his breast to some yards distance, and he fell back senseless.

On examination the six balls were found lodged in his breast; and one, which occasioned his death, had pierced the heart.
His weight was equal to that of a common ox...The commotion excited by our presence in this assemblage of several thousand timid animals was very interesting to me, who knew little of their manners.

The young cubs huddled together in the holes of the rocks and moaned piteously; those more advanced scampered and bowled down to the water with their mothers; whilst some of the old males stood up in defence of their families until the terror of the sailors' bludgeons became too strong to be resisted.
Those who have seen a farmyard well stocked with pigs, with their mothers in it, and have heard them all in tumult together, may form a good idea of the confusion in connection with the seals at Cone Point.

The sailors killed as many of these harmless and not unamiable creatures as they were able to skin during the time necessary for me to take the requisite angles; and we then left the poor affrighted multitude to recover from the effect of our inauspicious visit." Flinders' observations upon the sooty petrels, or mutton birds, seen at the Furneaux Islands, are valuable as forming a very early account of one of the most remarkable sea-birds in the world: "The sooty petrel, better known to us under the name of sheerwater, frequents the tufted grassy parts of all the islands in astonishing numbers.