jg THE SOUTHERN CLIFFS 



swiftness and uniformity of the onset of the sea on 

 a dead lee-shore in such a gale detracts something from 

 the grandeur of the sight. But the coasting brigs and 

 schooners forced ashore, seem almost to melt before 

 the waves, and even the true sea-fowl, whose home is 

 on the great waters, are starved and drowned, or driven 

 inland until the tempest lulls. 



For some days before the gale, while the frost lasted, 

 the number of home-bred wild-ducks, as well as the 

 true sea-ducks which winter in the Channel, had been 

 increased by arrivals from the North. During the day 

 these were seen swimming in little bands and companies 

 beneath the tall precipices which broke the force of 

 the north wind, or resting and sleeping just beyond the 

 breakers. The sea-ducks and cormorants, which feed 

 by day, were diving and fishing while the others slept, 

 sometimes rising to the surface in the middle of the 

 resting flocks, or taking long low flights from one 

 feeding-ground to another. At dusk the sea was 

 deserted by the birds, the cormorants flying heavily 

 into roost in the chalk precipices, while the ducks, 

 awake and hungry, took their nightly flight inland, 

 rushing high in dusky lines over the heads of the 

 fishermen lurking along the clifF with their long duck- 

 guns, whose flash and roar were the nightly signal of 

 the moving of the fowl. Those that stayed after dawn 

 in the preserved inland waters had for some days paid 

 a heavy toll to the gun. But so far, though the land- 

 birds were pinched, and crowding to the houses and 

 farm-buildings, the greater number of the sea-fowl had 



