118 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS 



ridges of porphyry and black volcanic rock that arrest 

 even a careless eye. Within its depths, dash and leap, 

 unseen, the headwaters of College, hurrying down to its 

 romantic valley, far below. 



A mile or two to the northward, another tremendous 

 chasm rends the flanks of Cheviot. This is the Bezzil, 

 an amphitheatre of pinnacled rocks, less constricted than 

 Henhole, but even more precipitous. Here, even at mid- 

 summer, a great snowbrae often lingers in defiance of our 

 summer sun. This hot year (1887), it had disappeared; 

 but only three weeks before (on May 29th), I had noticed 

 an acre or two of heavy snow lying on the sheltered face. 



These two sequestered crags, the Bezzil and the 

 Henhole, have been, from time immemorial (and re- 

 mained, even to these days), the breeding-places of the 

 raven and the peregrine falcon. In the year of which I 

 write (1887), both eyries had been occupied. Two 

 months before, the ravens already had their brood fledged 

 in Henhole. Their nest, in a rock-cleft, though accessible 

 by a diagonal ledge to within a few yards, was, at that 

 point, protected from nearer approach by a vertical 

 chasm that was impassable even to skilled rock-climbers. 

 But at that short distance — only a few yards — one could 

 overlook the great rough nest, and see the eggs or young 

 within. The peregrines also had bred in the Bezzil ; 

 but their young had (as usual) been taken, by the detest- 

 able device of lowering a ball of rough worsted into the 

 eyrie. Into this the young falcons so inextricably drive 

 their talons that they could thus be hauled up to the 

 crag-top. It was two years later, in 1889, according to 

 local report, that a Scotch gamekeeper came over and 

 shot the female peregrine off her nest. At any rate, since 

 the year named, the eyrie in Bezzil has been deserted. 



