THE CANADA GOOSE 107 



chirp from ridges of starved grass or from patches of yellowish mooes 

 mixed with melancholy bunches of reeds, red where they emerge, 

 as if the soil bled as they pierced it. A blaze of deep rich yrllow 

 from a bunch of golden rods and asters surprises one as would an 

 unexpected ribbon in the bonnet of a Quaker maiden. Long files 

 of geese wend their way to still dark ponds of fresh water in the 

 peaty black lands, where they will drink and run the gauntlet of 

 the youthful pot-hunter lying in ambush among the branches of fir 

 trees. Sometimes the brown, human-like head of a seal emerges 

 from the wave and peers shyly around. Once the writer watched 

 some thousand gannets feeding outside, evidently on a passing 

 school of herring. From a great height they dropped one after 



INTERRUPTED WAYFARERS. 



another with a splash into the blue sea, emerging with unfailing 

 certainty with a fish grasped to be swallowed in the air ; the splash- 

 ing caused by the ceaseless pelting of the sea with their white bodies 

 making a curious and beautiful spectacle. To while away another 

 hour there are golden plover to be pursued on the sands. One 

 can watch the tribes of small peeps and snipelets probing for clams 

 and collecting the dinner cast up by the sea ; one can pace the 

 glistening strand and watch the white sails, swelling before the 

 breeze, of tall-masted barques, timber-laden, setting forth on 

 their outward passage, or the snowy sails of the little fishing fleet 

 hovering over their lobster traps like a flock of terns, or a row of 

 velvet and bottle-nosed coots (scoters) diving in the surf after shell- 

 fish, and indulging in a sham battle of mock chases and retreats. 



