376 LABRADOR 



The birds were delicious eating. They fattened almost 

 to bursting on the Empetrum, or curlewberry, so abundant 

 along the coast. The fishermen kept their guns loaded, 

 and shot into the great flocks as they wheeled by, bringing 

 down many a fat bird. About 1888 or 1890 the curlew 

 rapidly diminished in numbers, and at the present day 

 perhaps a dozen or two, or possibly none at all, are seen in 

 a season. 



The rocky islands which line the Labrador coast have 

 always been favourite breeding places for various water- 

 birds, chief among which may be mentioned the puffin, 

 black guillemot, the common and Brunnich's murres, 

 razor-billed auk, great black-backed gull, glaucous gull, 

 herring gull, Arctic tern, common and double-crested cor- 

 morants, and American and Greenland eider-ducks. These 

 formerly bred abundantly all along the coast, and before 

 the arrival of the white man paid a comparatively small and 

 unimportant tribute to the greed of polar bears, Eskimos, 

 and Indians. This natural pruning, as it might be called, 

 had little or no influence on the numbers of the birds. 

 White men, however, with their insatiable greed and their 

 more systematic methods, have created havoc in the ranks 

 of these interesting water-fowl. In Audubon's time the 

 vile business of "egging," as it was called, was at its height, 

 and the horrors of the business are graphically pictured by 

 the great ornithologist. He describes a shallop with a crew 

 of eight men : 



" There rides the filthy thing! The afternoon is half 

 over. Her crew have thrown their boat overboard, they 

 enter and seat themselves, each with a rusty gun. One 

 of them sculls the skiff towards an island, for a century 



