282 PUFFIN-SHOOTING — GALE OFF CHATEAU. 



Our party first visited Bonne Esperance, from there L'Anse 

 Loup and Forteau ; at each of these places we spent some time 

 dredging in the harbor, and filling our bottles with specimens and 

 our cans of alcohol with fishes and other marine treasures. When 

 off Blanc Sablon, we lowered a boat and all hands went for a hunt. 

 Some went to Pigeon Island and some the next morning to the west 

 end of Greenley Island : the puffins were as abundant as when des- 

 cribed by Dr. Coues earlier in our pages. We had no difficulty in 

 killing three hundred in a single day, and could have procured twice 

 that amount without the least trouble. We found the island on this 

 end Hterally tunnelled with the holes of this bird, and the appear- 

 ance was much as if thousands of woodchucks had been at work 

 burrowing the ground ; there was scarcely a square yard of earth that 

 did not have at least one burrow in it while more often there were 

 twenty. 



We lay in Forteau and L'Anse Loup harbors, becalmed, for 

 nearly two weeks, during which time we used the dredge with great 

 success and brought up from depths varying from six to twenty 

 fathoms a large assortment and variety of marine invertebrates, 

 which were carefully labelled and packed away to be sent to the 

 Smithsonian Institution at Washington. The waters seemed alive 

 with new and curious forms, however, and every haul of the dredge 

 procured something that we had not before obtained. 



I shall not soon forget our run to Chateau. We started with a 

 fair breeze but it soon became so fogg}^ that we could not see where 

 we were going. AVe reefed sail and continued to beat about look- 

 ing for some signs of the harbor. Suddenly we passed some fishing 

 boats but as suddenly found huge rocks looming up directly in 

 front of us. A shout from our captain, while he put the helm hard 

 to, brought the vessel around, but so narrowly did we escape the 

 rocks that as we jibbed we could have touched them with an oar. 

 We put the ship about, and scud for the open sea. The waves were 

 lashed to fury by the wind which blew abaft our starboard side ; yet, 

 blowing as it was in this howling tempest, we succeeded in signal- 

 ling one of the small boats for a pilot, who boarded us with a great 



