198 WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 



ing to the book ; it may be, but not according to 

 the poem, and when I read this chapter I shall 

 read " stormy," whatever the unimaginative type 

 says. 



In an earlier chapter I have given a general 

 description of Three-Arch Rocks Reservation and 

 its multitudes of wild sea-life, a description that 

 falls hopelessly short of the scene. I had looked 

 at pictures of the Rocks, had listened to stories 

 of their rookeries, but the only account that had 

 greatly interested me was of the small colony of 

 petrels nesting on the steep north slope of the 

 summit of Shag Rock, the outermost of the 

 three. It was the petrels above all else that I de- 

 sired to see ; it was this patch of marl or earthy 

 guano on the top of the rock that I wished to 

 climb to ; for this little patch of earth was some- 

 thing that I could share with the birds, a point 

 upon which we could meet, a place that their 

 wave-wandering wings and my clod-heavy feet 

 could have in common. The thought of it greatly 

 moved me. 



I must be somewhat of a mariner. My forbears, 

 back for three hundred years, have all been doc- 

 tors, farmers, and the like ; and Quakers of Lon- 



