THE LABRADOR JOURNAL 425 



and Tringa pitsilla'^ were both shot in numbers this day; 

 the young are now as large as the old, and we see little 

 flocks everywhere. We heard the " Gulnare " was at 

 Bonne Esperance, twenty miles west of us; I wish she 

 was here, I should much like to see her officers again. 



August 5. This has been a fine day, no hurricane. I 

 have finished two Labrador Curlews, but not the ground. 

 A few Curlews were shot, and a Black-breasted Plover. 

 John shot a Shore Lark that had almost completed its 

 moult ; it appears to me that northern birds come to 

 maturity sooner than southern ones, yet the reverse is the 

 case in our own species. Birds of the Tringa kind are 

 constantly passing over our heads in small bodies bound 

 westward, some of the same species which I observed in 

 the Floridas in October. The migration of birds is per- 

 haps much more wonderful than that of fishes, almost all 

 of which go feeling their way along the shores and return 

 to the very same river, creek, or even hole to deposit 

 their spawn, as birds do to their former nest ; but the 

 latter do not feel their way, but launching high in air go 

 at once and correctly too, across vast tracts of country, 

 yet at once stopping in portions heretofore their own, and 

 of which they know by previous experiences the comforts 

 and advantages. We have had several arrivals of ves- 

 sels, some so heavily loaded with fish that the water runs 

 over their decks ; others, in ballast, have come to purchase 

 fish. 



August 10. I now sit down to post my poor book, 

 while a heavy gale is raging furiously around our vessel. 

 My reason for not writing at night is that I have been 

 drawing so constantly, often seventeen hours a day, that 

 the weariness of my body at night has been unprecedented, 

 by such work at least. At times I felt as if my physical 

 powers would abandon me; my neck, my shoulders, and, 



^ Not Ereunetes fusillns, but the Least Sandpiper, Tringa (Actodromas) 

 minutilla, which appears as Tringa pusilla in Audubon's works. — E. C. 



