226 WILD NATURE'S WAYS. 



Arriving early the following morning at Girvan, 

 on the Ayrshire coast, I was fortunate enough to 

 secure passage in a sailing boat just bound for 

 the awesome rock to pick up a cargo of undressed 

 curling stones. 



Upon landing, I induced my old friend Mr. 

 Thompson, head of the lighthouse staff and a 

 capital cragsman, to accompany me to the cliffs, 

 and photographed him on the way, m order to 

 give the reader some little idea of the difficulties 

 and dangers of the ground over which we had to 

 travel. Close by where the picture on the pre- 

 vious page ends, in the bottom right-hand corner, 

 the edge of the precipice begins, and if either of 

 us had made a slip we should ha\'e rolled over 

 this, and fallen a sheer five or six hundred feet 

 into the sea below. 



By taking advantage of a goat track we 

 worked our way round and down to v/here the 

 solan geese breed on ledges inaccessible to all 

 but the sure-footed and daring. It is by no 

 means an easy task to convey an adequate idea 

 of the perils and difficulties of camera work on 

 such stupendous crags without laying oneself 

 open to the charge of exaggeration b\^ people 

 who have never tried it. 



Several times I stalked a gannet seated on 

 her nest literally foot b}^ foot and inch by inch, 

 stopping ever and anon when she showed the 



