TO ESQUIMAUX POINT 



billed auk or two. Lucas, who visited the 

 islands in 1887, found "a few Gannets in 

 spite of the incessant persecution of the Indians 

 who regularly make a clean sweep there." 

 The persecution continued and no gannets have 

 nested there for fifteen years. The birds have 

 a sentimental attachment for the spot, how- 

 ever, and visit it every year, and on June 2ist 

 we saw about thirty of these splendid birds fly- 

 ing near the island. 



Of an entirely different character from the 

 forlorn little villages we had passed was the 

 trig settlement of Mingan, some six miles be- 

 yond Long Point, protected from the sea by 

 a wooded island which shelters a deep sound. 

 The dominating feature here was the Hudson's 

 Bay Company's Post neatly fenced and painted 

 as all these posts are. This was flanked on the 

 west by the Indian village, and on the east by 

 the substantial house of a salmon fisherman, 

 where we made our home during the latter part 

 of June for a week. 



While the Seven Islands are granitic, and 

 rise steeply to rounded summits, the group of 

 Mingan Islands which begins off Long Point at 

 the Perroquets and extends for fifty miles to St. 



59 



