146 THE SHETLANDS IN THE 



magnificent birds was driven by stress of weather out- 

 side to run for shelter to Loch Broom. 



The day after our visit to Noss, when on the point of 

 No-Ness, fifteen miles or so south, we were taken to see 

 a perforated rock, like a double arch of a submerged 

 cathedral, which for many years had been the nesting- 

 place of a pair of the Great Black-backed Gulls, worse 

 tyrants, if possible, than even the Skua. The Great 

 Black-back is a solitary bird, bearing, ' like the Turk, 

 no brother near his throne/ dreaded and shunned by 

 other birds, whose eggs and young he destroys. 



Macaulay, minister of Ardnainurchan, and historian 

 of St. Kilda, a great-uncle of the historian of the larger 

 neighbouring islands, writing in 1758, says: 



'It is hardly possible to express the hatred with which the 

 otherwise good-natured St. Kildans pursue these Gulls. If one 

 happens to mention them, it throws their whole blood into a ferment. 

 If caught, they outvie one another in torturing this imp of hell to 

 death. Such is the emphatical language in which they express 

 action so grateful to their vindictive spirit. They pluck out his 

 eyes, sew his wings together, and send him adrift. . . . They 

 extract the meat out of the shell of his egg and leave that quite 

 empty in the nest. The Gull sits upon it till she pines away.' 



From the cliff where we lay down to watch them we 

 could see three little birds offspring of the feathered 

 Cain just out of the egg, lying on the short heather 

 which covered the top of the rock, while the parent 

 birds, whose consciences, perhaps, made cowards of 

 them, hung near enough to watch us, but far enough 

 off to have been well out of gunshot if we had had any 

 murderous designs, which was not the case, 



