4 WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 



too far away from the looming piles to see that 

 the gray of their walls was the gray of uncounted 

 colonies of nesting birds, colonies that covered the 

 craggy steeps as the green firs clothed the slopes 

 of the Coast Range mountains, up to the hang- 

 ing fog. 



As we steamed on nearer, the sound of the surf 

 about the rocks became audible ; the birds in the 

 air grew more numerous, their cries now faintly 

 mingling with the sound of the sea. The hole in the 

 Middle Rock, a mere fleck of foam at first, widened 

 rapidly into an arching tunnel through which our 

 boat might have run ; the sea began to break be- 

 fore us over half-sunken ledges ; and soon upon us 

 fell the damp shadows of Three-Arch Rocks, for 

 now we were looking far up at their sides, at the 

 sea-birds in their guano-gray rookeries, — gulls, 

 cormorants, guillemots, puffins, murres, — encrust- 

 ing the ragged walls from tide-line to pinnacle, 

 as the crowding barnacles encrusted the bases from 

 the tide-line down. 



We were not approaching without protest, for 

 the birds were coming off to meet us, more and 

 more the nearer we drew, wheeling and clacking 

 overhead in a constantly thickening cloud of low- 



