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Bentarasko Benta Section 05
Page 02
Without taking into account insects and such other "small deer,"--to quote Shakespeare's expression,--this fundamental principle of population will become at once apparent if we examine merely familiar instances of back-boned or vertebrate animals. The lowest vertebrates are clearly the fishes: and the true fishes have almost invariably gigantic families. A single cod, for example, is said to produce, roughly speaking, nine million eggs at a birth (I cannot pretend I have checked this calculation); but supposing they were only a million, and that one-tenth of those eggs alone ever came to maturity, there would still be a hundred thousand codfish in the sea this year for every pair that swam in it last year: and these would increase to a hundred thousand times that number next year; and so on, till in four or five years' time the whole sea would be but one solid mass of closely-packed cod-banks. We can see for ourselves that nothing of the sort actually occurs--practically speaking, there are about the same number of cod one year as another. In spite of this enormous birth-rate, therefore, the cod population is not increasing--it is at a standstill. What does that imply? Why, that taking one brood and one year with another, only a pair of cod, roughly speaking, survive to maturity out of each eight or nine million eggs. The mother cod lays its millions, in order that two may arrive at the period of spawning. All the rest get devoured as eggs, or snapped up as young fry, or else die of starvation, or are otherwise unaccounted for. It seems to us a wasteful way of replenishing the earth: but it is nature's way; we can only bow respectfully to her final decision.
On January 23rd we descended rapidly through beautiful forest from Camp 71, where we had halted for the night, to a large _tambo_ called Enenas, in charge of an Italian. The place was situated in a beautiful valley intersected by a streamlet saturated with lime. It looked exactly like milk, and hurt your gums considerably when you drank it. The excellent mule I was riding had unfortunately hurt one of its legs while we were crossing a swollen torrent, where the mule and myself were nearly swept away in the foaming current. Riding on the lame animal, which was all the time stumbling and falling down on its knees, was unpleasant. In the narrow trail it was not possible to unload another animal and change the saddle, and it was out of the question for me to walk.
This charter, as will be readily seen, could not please the Virginians, since the entire territory conveyed by it was part of the grant of 1609 to the London Company for Virginia. But as this and subsequent charters had been annulled in 1624, the new colony was held by the Privy Council to have the law on its side, and Lord Baltimore was left to make his preparations undisturbed. He fitted out two vessels, the Ark and the Dove, and sent them on their voyage of colonization. They went by the way of the West Indies, arriving off Point Comfort in 1634. Sailing up the Potomac, they landed on the island of St. Clement's, and took formal possession of their new home. Calvert explored a river, now called the St. Mary's, a tributary of the Potomac, and being pleased with the spot began a settlement. He gained the friendship of the natives by purchasing the land and by treating them justly and humanely.
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