204 WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 



the thought of how I was to get down. I had 

 been brought up in the flat and gentle fields of 

 New Jersey. I had climbed sand-dunes along the 

 Jersey coast, and fences and trees, but never slip- 

 pery, slimy bird rocks like these here in the 

 Pacific. 



Nothing I had ever seen on my native coast 

 equaled this for wildness and strangeness and 

 abundance of life. The very sea seemed vaster, 

 no doubt because of the height of the rock, the 

 mountains shoreward, and the bewildering, almost 

 threatening, tumult of the alarmed birds spread- 

 ing far out over the water. 



While the cameras were being unslung and 

 the moving-picture machine set up, I went after 

 the petrels' nests. It was now about three o'clock; 

 the sun was hot and the young birds, especially 

 the young cormorants, suffered from their expo- 

 sure when our presence frightened their parents 

 off the nests. 



Never, from the time a cormorant egg is laid 

 till the young fly from the nest, are the shelter- 

 ing wings of the parents taken from them for fear 

 of the greedy gulls. Our appearance had upset 

 the even balance of things and was causing great 



