76 WITH NATURE AND A CAMERA. 



variation in the colour of their plumage. Some of 

 the birds were flying straight along on the business 

 of nest-making intent, whilst others wheeled idly 

 round and round in order to satisfy their curiosity 

 by making a leisurely survey of us and our boat. 

 As far as the eye could see small objects, the sea 

 was covered in every direction by a vast throng of 

 Puffins, Guillemots, and Razor-bills, many of which 

 gazed in bewildered astonishment at us until the 

 bows of the boat got quite close to them, when 

 they dived with the swiftness and silence of thought 

 and were gone. In front of us stood Borrera 

 sternly guarded by its dark bulwark of forbidding 

 crags, from the topmost edges of which brilliant 

 green slopes of great steepness ran upwards until 

 they were lost in the trailing skirts of a luminous 

 white cloud. To our left was Stack Lee, a gigantic 

 pillar of rock rising about three hundred feet out 

 of the ocean. Its sloping upper parts and every 

 available ledge and corner were positively white 

 with Solan Geese sitting on their nests. Such a 

 snow-like mass do these birds present, that we were 

 told on a fine day the Stack may be distinctly seen 

 from Long Island a distance of forty miles. 



When we neared our destination the swell was 

 breaking so badly upon the rocks that we had 

 considerable doubts as to whether we should be 

 able to land. A dog we had in the boat evidently 

 thinking that he, at any rate, was equal to the 

 task leapt overboard and tried. He easily reached 

 the rocks, but every time he attempted to land the 

 heavy backwash tore him away, and he would 

 inevitably have been drowned had not one of the 

 men seized and dragged him into the boat again. 



After a great deal of manoeuvring, accompanied 

 by much excitement on the part of the crew, a 



