CRUISE OF LA BELLE MARGUERITE 



deep holes in the hard bank with their feeble 

 claws and bill is always a mystery. It only 

 shows what persistence will do, and the same 

 lesson was taught by the great cross gullies, or 

 canyons, made in these cliffs by little rivulets, 

 that had been slowly cutting down to sea level, 

 or perhaps had always remained at sea level 

 as the cliffs were gradually elevated. 



On the way we stopped to watch a single 

 northern phalarope, sitting like a miniature 

 swan in the water and pirouetting about in the 

 stormy waves. The bird proved to be a female. 

 It is interesting to remember that among the 

 phalaropes the females are larger and more 

 brightly coloured than the males, that they do 

 the courting, and that they leave to the down- 

 trodden husband the duties of incubation and 

 care of the young. They are suffragettes with 

 a vengeance. 



At Faux Pas Island, a gravelly and grassy 

 bank of a few acres in extent, we landed and 

 feasted our eyes on our first saddle-back's or 

 great black-backed gull's nest. A conspicuous 

 object it was, over four feet across, made of 

 roots, grasses and seaweed, and built over a 

 derelict tree trunk. Inside it measured ten 

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