204 A HISTORY OF 



These birds, like all others of the rapacious kind, lay but few eggt? 

 and hence, in many places, their number is daily seen to diminish 

 The lessening of so many rapacious birds may, at first sight, appear 

 a benefit to mankind ; but when we consider how many of the natives 

 of our islands are sustained by their flesh, either fresh or salted, we 

 shall find no satisfaction in thinking that these poor people may in 

 time lose their chief support. The gull, in general, as was said, builda 

 on the ledges of rocks, and lays from one egg to three, in a nest form- 

 ed of long grass and sea-weed. Most of the kind are fishy tasted, 

 with black stringy flesh ; yet the young ones are better food : and of 

 these, with several other birds of the penguin kind, the poor inhabit- 

 ants of our northern islands make their wretched banquets. They 

 have been long used to no other food ; and even salted gull can be 

 relished by those who know no better. Almost all delicacy is a rela- 

 tive thing, and the man who repines at the luxuries of a well-served 

 table, starves not for want, but from comparison. The luxuries of the 

 poor are indeed coarse to us, yet still they are luxuries to those igno- 

 rant of better ; and it is probable enough that a Kilda or a Feroe man 

 may be found to exist, outdoing Apicius himself, in consulting the 

 pleasures of the table. Indeed, if it be true, that such meat as is the 

 most dangerously earned, is the sweetest, no man can dine so luxuri- 

 ously as these, as none venture so hardily in the pursuit of a dinner. 

 In Jacobson's History of the Feroe Islands, we have an account of 

 the method in which those birds are taken; and I will deliver it in 

 his own simple manner. 



" It cannot be expressed with what pains and danger they take 

 these birds in those high, steep cliffs, whereof many are two hundred 

 fathoms high. But there are men apt by nature, and fit for the work, 

 who take them usually in two manners : they either climb from be- 

 low into these high promontories that are as steep as a wall, or they 

 let themselves down with a rope from above. When they climb from 

 below, they have a pole five or six ells long, with an iron hook at the 

 end, which they that are below in the boat, or on the cliff, fasten to 

 the man's girdle, helping him up thus to the highest place where he 

 can get footing; afterward they also help up another man, and thus 

 several climb up as high as possibly they can ; and, where they find 

 difficulty, they help each other up, by thrusting one another up with 

 their poles. When the first hath taken footing, he draws the other 

 up to him, by the rope fastened to his waist; and so they proceed till 

 they come to the place where the birds build. They there go aboul 

 as well as they can, in those dangerous places, the one holding the 

 rope at one end, and fixing himself to the rock, the other going at the 

 other end from place to ptace. If it should happen that he chanceth 

 to fall, the other that stands firm keeps him up, and helps him up 

 again. But if he passeth safe, he likewise fastens himself till the other 

 has passed the same dangerous place also. Thus they go about the 

 rliffs after birds as they please. It often happeneth, however, (the 

 more is the pity) that when one doth not stand fast enough, or is not 

 sufficiently strong to hold up the other in his fall, that they both fa.M 

 down and are killed. In this manner some do perish every year." 



Mr. Peter Clanson, in his description of Norway, writes, that there 

 was anciently a law in that country ? that whosoever climbed SD on 



