426 AUDUBON 



more than all, my fingers, were almost useless through 

 actual fatigue at drawing. Who would believe this ? yet 

 nothing is more true. When at the return of dawn my 

 spirits called me out of my berth, my body seemed to beg 

 my mind to suffer it to rest a while longer; and as dark 

 forced me to lay aside my brushes I immediately went to 

 rest as if I had walked sixty-five miles that day, as I have 

 done a few times in my stronger days. Yesternight, when 

 I rose from my little seat to contemplate my work and to 

 judge of the effect of it compared with the nature which 

 I had been attempting to copy, it was the affair of a 

 moment; and instead of waiting, as I always like to do, 

 until that hazy darkness which is to me the best time to 

 judge of the strength of light and shade, I went at once 

 to rest as if delivered from the heaviest task I ever per- 

 formed. The young men think my fatigue is added to 

 by the fact that I often work in wet clothes, but I have 

 done that all my life with no ill effects. No ! no ! it is 

 that I am no longer young. But I thank God that I did 

 accomplish my task; my drawings are finished to the best 

 of my ability, the skins well prepared by John. We have 

 been to Paroket Island to procure the young of the Mor- 

 mon arcticus. As we approached the breeding-place, the 

 air was filled with these birds, and the water around abso- 

 lutely covered with them, while on the rocks were thou- 

 sands, like sentinels on the watch. I took a stand, loaded 

 and shot twenty-seven times, and killed twenty-seven 

 birds, singly and on the wing, without missing a shot; as 

 friend Bachman would say, " Pretty fair, Old Jostle ! " The 

 young men laughed, and said the birds were so thick no 

 one could miss if he tried; however, none of them did 

 so well. We had more than we wanted, but the young 

 were all too small to draw with effect. Nearly every bird 

 I killed had a fish in its beak, closely held by the head, 

 and the body dangling obliquely in the air. These fish 

 were all of the kind called here Lints, a long slender fish 



