190 ST. KILDA FROM WITHOUT 



A rumour soon after found its way southwards, 

 through the Oban Times, brought by the passengers on 

 board the Hebridean, which effected a landing not 

 many days after our unsuccessful attempt, that since 

 the St. Kildians had then last held communication with 

 the outer world, two strange birds, ' like Razor-bills, but 

 twice the size ' a fair rough description of the Great 

 Auk had been seen by more than one of the islanders. 

 Stories to much the same purport have, during the last 

 eight or ten years, come from the coast of Norway. 



There is nothing impossible in the idea that the bird 

 may be still in existence somewhere, and nothing more 

 probable than that, in such case, one may sooner or later 

 find its way to St. Kilda, where it was once common. 



Martin, writing in 1697, mentions it first in the list of 

 sea-fowl visiting the island ' the stateliest as well as 

 the largest of the sea-fowl here. He comes,' he writes, 

 ' without regard to any wind, appears the first of May 

 and goes away about the middle of June.' Sixty years 

 later its visits were becoming less regular, but it was 

 still a familiar bird. Macaulay, who visited St. Kilda in 

 1758, as missionary from the Society for Propagating 

 Christian Knowledge, which, as he tells in his preface, 

 took ' a peculiar concern in the people of that Island,' 

 says that he had not himself, during his stay, 'an 

 opportunity of knowing it.' The St. Kildians do not, 

 he adds, ' receive an annual visit from this strange bird 

 as from all the rest on the list and many more. It 

 keeps at a distance from them, they know not where, 

 for a course of years. From what land or ocean it 



