352 THE WILD-FOWLEH. 



discretion, that the bird-men of the Orkney Isles are sometimes let 

 down over the rocks by means of a rope made of straw, and not in- 

 frequently of hogs' bristles ! adding, that the fowlers prefer the latter 

 even to ropes of hemp, because they are not liable to be cut. But 

 this is evidently one of those careless assertions of Mr. Pennant on 

 which no reliance can be placed, and which shake the authority of 

 that otherwise able and amusing- writer. So illogical a statement 

 should never have been put forth : it is utterly inconsistent with 

 common sense to suppose that a rope of some thirty or forty fathoms 

 in length, capable of enduring considerable strain, could be made out 

 of hogs' bristles; which, every one knows, do not grow to above three 

 inches in length, and the very nature of which, stiff and brittle as 

 they are, renders them totally unfit for the purposes of a rope ; 

 besides, all the hogs in the Orkneys could not produce sufficient 

 bristles for such a purpose ; and, if they could, the ingenuity of man 

 would be most sorely taxed to make a forty-fathom rope of such ma- 

 terial : moveover, hogs' bristles are of too great a value for other 

 purposes, to be used so extravagantly. 



Mr. Pennant must have mistaken horse-hai?' for hogs' bristles. 

 Horse-hair bird-ropes are used by the fowlers of the Island of St. 

 Kilda (vide post, chapter Ixix.). 



Few men who practise these hazardous systems of fowling come to 

 a natural death. There is a common saying among' rock-fowlers, 

 that " such-a-one's gutcher went over the sneak."* 



Similar systems of fowling to those already described as practised 

 in Norway and the Orkneys, are employed in the Faroe Islands; where 

 some of the cliffs are two hundred fathoms in height,! and are ex- 

 plored by the fowlers of those islands both by ascent and descent. 

 The sea surrounding many parts of the Faroe Islands, whce the 

 rock-fowler ventures, is extremely turbulent, and the currents varied, 

 rapid, and whirling ; but, notwithstanding such threatening horrors, 

 the fowler climbs about rocks projecting over the sea, at considerable 

 altitude, with as little concern as if he were but a few feet from the 

 bottom, and had a feather-bed in readiness below to receive him, in 

 case he fell. 



The birds which form the chief objects of attraction to the fowlers 



* Pennant. 



t " It cannot be expressed with what pain and danger they take these birds in 

 those high and steep cliffs, whereof many are above two hundred fathoms high." — 



