184 ANTICOSTI. 



their way ; keen-eyed sentries patrol their topmost crags, 

 and scouting parties and videttes ever on the alert wheel 

 and hover when vessels approach. On every tier and ledge 

 of the shelving rocks thousands sit demurely, each on its 

 individual egg, setting. When the month of June arrives, 

 " eggers " from Quebec and Halifax go out to these islands 

 in sloops and shallops, and effecting a landing in the calmest 

 days, proceed to break all the eggs they find, and waiting 

 over night for new deposits from the parent birds, secure a 

 cargo of those fresh-laid. There is a heavy legal penalty 

 attaching to this practice, for it is destructive of millions of 

 embryo birds. Nevertheless, " eggers " pursue it " on the 

 sly," and their precious cargoes are eagerly purchased when- 

 ever brought to port. And the birds do not seem to diminish 

 in the aggregate, though they frequently disappear from long- 

 established breeding-grounds after repeated inroads. 



Many of these islands are bare, perpendicular chffs, inac- 

 cessible even by boats, except in unusual weather, on account 

 of the ocean swell which prevents a landing. A year or two 

 ago, three eggers, who had succeeded in landing, found 

 themselves rock-bound by the rising winds, and for two 

 months they remained on those desolate rocks with no other 

 shelter than the rifts and chasms, and no other food than 

 the birds and their eggs, or water than the rain Avhich col- 

 lected in the hollows ! Every effort was made to get them 

 off, even by Government vessels, employing every imaginable 

 appliance and contrivance, but in vain. At last they were 

 rescued, nearly dead with famine and exposure, just as the 

 chilling winds of September began to blow. 



The Island of Auticosti, long known and much dreaded 

 by mariners, has remained uninhabited until this day, by 

 reason of its inaccessible coast, its lack of any harbor accom- 

 modation whatever for vessels of large size, and the danger- 

 ous currents that beset it on every hand. Its north-eastern 

 coast is a wall of white cliffs four hundred feet high, Avhich 

 glisten like snow in the sun, whenever the sun shines, for 



