212 THE LAND'S END 



and some of them that were stiff with cold were 

 taken in but were found dead in the morning. From 

 all I could hear the migration appears to have spent 

 itself at this spot. 



To me the " pathetic " part of it was the reception 

 the starved fugitives met with from the good people 

 along the coast, especially at St. Ives with its horn or 

 " island " beyond the town thrust out into the sea, a 

 convenient resting-place for the birds after flying across 

 the bay. My information on the subject, which would 

 fill some twenty pages of a blue-book, was gathered 

 from men and lads, mostly fishermen, who had taken 

 part in the massacre. Each person buys a handful of 

 small fish-hooks, manufactured for the purpose and 

 sold, a dozen for a penny, by a tradesman in the town. 

 Ten to twenty baited hooks are fastened with short 

 threads to a string, two or three feet long, called a 

 " teagle," and placed on a strip of ground from which 

 the snow has been cleared. To these strips of mould 

 or turf the birds fly and seize the hooks, and so 

 blind to danger are they made by hunger that they 

 are not deterred by the frantic struggles of those 

 already hooked. Many birds succeed in freeing 

 themselves by breaking the thread in their struggles, 

 but always with that bit of barbed bent wire in their 

 mouths or stomachs, which must eventually cause 

 their death. In one garden where food was placed 

 for the birds and their hunters kept out, eleven dead 

 and dying birds were picked up in one day among 

 the shrubs, all with hooks in their gullets. 



One young fisherman told me with great glee that 



