44 EGG-COLLECTORS. 



hand : the first is warped round the crow-bar, so as to be 

 let out at pleasure ; the second is fixed to it by a noose, 

 and when the suspended sportsman wishes to reascend, he 

 shakes this second rope as a signal, and two men on the 

 top of the cliff begin hauling at the first, or waist-rope, 

 while he assists the operation by climbing up the second, 

 hand over hand. The crow-bar is rarely stuck so deep as 

 eight inches in the ground, so that at every movement of 

 the collector it may be seen to give most fearfully ; but 

 impunity creates valour, and as no ill has yet resulted from 

 this careless mode of planting the bar, they seem to fear 

 none. At some parts of the face of the cliff are shelving 

 ledges of the most slippery turf, and when arrived at these, 

 the collector throws off his waist-rope, and walks or clam- 

 bers along for fifty or a hundred feet, and sometimes even 

 more. This, though less striking to a stranger than the 

 act of dangling from a rope, after the fashion of a spider 

 from his thread, is in fact the most dangerous feat of all, 

 for the slightest slip is fatal. Another constant source of 

 danger is the detaching of small pieces of rock or loose 

 stones, by the friction of the rope against the cliff: to 

 avoid these, the cliff-man has to keep an incessant look- 

 out, and to bob his head this way and that, to escape a 

 broken sconce. 



The GUILLEMOT, or ' willock,' as it is here called, sits 

 with its egg under its wing, or pressed to one side of its 

 breast, and always on the same side, so that a mark on the 

 breast of the bird plainly shows the situation of the egg 

 whilst she is sitting.* After the day when the egg is laid, 



* " The men also assure you that, when the young guillemot gets to a certain 

 size, it manages to climb upon the back of the old bird, which conveys it down 

 to the ocean. Having carried a good telescope with me, through it I saw num- 



