LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN WILD FOWL 91 



ice-slieltered channels, greedily waiting for the shellfish and sea urchins which 

 the old bird busied herKself in procuring for them. Near by was a low isolated 

 rock ledge, which ^^•e called Hans Island. The glaucous gulls, those cormorants 

 of the Arctic seas, had made it their peculiar homestead ; their progeny, 

 already fully fledged and voracious, crowded the guano-whitened rocks; and 

 the mothers, with long necks and gaping yellow bills, swooped above the 

 peaceful shallows of the eiders, carrying ofC the young birds, seemingly .lust 

 as their wants required. The gull would gobble up and swallow a young 

 eider in less time than it takes me to describe the act. For a moment you 

 Avould see the paddling feet of the poor little wretch protruding from the 

 mouth ; then came a distension of the neck as it descended into the stomach ; 

 a few moments more and the young gulls were feeding on the ejected morsel. 



J. D. Figgins (1902) says that, in northwest Greenland, " eider 

 ducks are much prized by the natives and are killed by spearing 

 from the kayak. The spear is simply a sharpened rod of iron set 

 into the end of a light shaft. At 15 or 20 yards the hunter seldom 

 misses his mark." 



Keferring to the food value of eider's eggs to the Eskimos, Dr. 

 Donald B. MacMillan (1918) writes: 



How impatiently we awaited the discovery of those first golden nuggets 

 in the nests. Can we ever forget those annual pilgrimages to the shrine at 

 historic Littleton and Eider Duck Islands and McGarys Rock. Here, among 

 a laughing, jolly company of men, women, and children, we pitched our tents 

 among the nests ; we boiled eggs, and we fried eggs, and we scrambled eggs, 

 and we shirred eggs, and we did everything to eggs. In a few hours 4,000 

 delicious fresh eggs were gathered from one small island alone. Cached 

 beneath the rocks, away from the direct rays of the sun, they remain perfectly 

 fresh ; they become chilled in August ; and freeze hard as so many rocks in 

 September — a much-appreciated delicacy during the long winter months. The 

 shells are often broken and the contents poured or squirted from the mouth 

 of tlie Eskimo into the intestinal sheath of the bearded seal or the walrus, 

 a most nutritious sausage to be eaten on the long sledge trips. 



The Moravian missionaries of northern Laborador showed me some 

 beautiful eider-down blankets which were made by the Eskimos of 

 Greenland for sale in the Danish markets; they Avere made of the 

 breasts of eiders from which the feathers had all been plucked, leav- 

 ing the doAvn on the skins, which had been cured so that they were 

 very soft and pliable ; the edges of the blankets were trimmed with 

 the cured skins of the heads of many northern and king eiders, 

 making very attractive borders. They were the softest, lightest, 

 warmest, and most beautiful blankets I had ever seen, and I was 

 told that they brought such fancy prices that they were beyond the 

 reach of ordinary mortals. I belie-ve the natives also use these 

 plucked skins for winter underwear, wearing them with the down 

 side next to the skin ; eider-down underwear and Arctic-hare stock- 

 ings must be very soft and warm. 



The eider-down industrj'^ has never been so highly developed on the 

 American side of the Atlantic as it has on the other side. It would 



