68 THE LABRADOE PEXIXSULA, chaf. xxv. 



distance of seven or eight miles. The birds whicli breed 

 on these rocks are gannets, puffins, three species of guille- 

 mots, razor-billed auks, and kilh wakes. No other breed- 

 ing-place on the American shore is so remarkable at once 

 for the number and variety of the species inhabiting it.* 



St. Paul's Island. — A bold, high, and dangerous 

 gneissoid rock, painfully celebrated for the disastrous 

 shipwrecks of which it has been the cause. It is not 

 quite three miles long, one broad, and 450 feet high. 

 Vessels entering the Gulf generally make for St. Paul's 

 Island, and take their courses by it. It is situated be- 

 tween Newfoundland and the northern extremity of Cape 

 Breton, and directly in the route of ships saihng to and 

 from the Gulf. 



' All the captains and masters of vessels,' says Bayfield, 

 ' with whom I have had an opportunity of conversing upon 

 the subject, have expressed it as their opinion, that the 

 erection and maintenance of a good light at this place 

 would be of more benefit to the navigation than any one 

 that has been or could be built on the ocean route to the 

 St. Lawrence. All further agree that the dread of 

 making too free with the Bird Eocks has led to tenfold 

 more shipwrecks and disasters elsewhere than ever oc- 

 curred directly on them ; that is, the greater number of 

 casualties of that nature, which take place on Bryon and 

 Magdalen Islands, and along the western coast of New- 

 foundland, may be attributed to a desire on the part of 

 masters of vessels to stand clear of these dangerous " rocks." 



' The following statement of shipwrecks, &c., between 



* Dr. Bryant on tlie Birds of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 



