90 THE LAND'S END 



varied bird life ; nevertheless in this unpromising 

 place and in winter I had altogether a very pleasant 

 time with the feathered people. 



When the weather was too bad for the cliffs the 

 gulls were driven inland. Gannets and cormorants 

 could endure it ; the sea was their true home and 

 abiding-place and they were not to be torn from it ; 

 but the vagrant, unsettled and somewhat unballasted 

 gulls would not or could not stay, and were like froth 

 of the breakers which is caught up and whirled 

 inland by the blast. On such days (and they were 

 many) the gulls were all over the land, wandering 

 about in their usual aimless manner, or in flocks seen 

 resting on the grass in the shelter of a stone wall, or 

 mixing loosely with companies of daws, rooks, peewits 

 and other skilful worm and grub hunters, waiting idly 

 for the chance of snatching a morsel from a neigh- 

 bour's beak. 



I was a little like the gulls in my habits : on fine 

 days the cliffs and cliff castles were my favourite 

 haunts ; in very rough weather my rambles were 

 mostly away from the sea, where 1 had my old com- 

 panions of the sea wall, the gulls and daws, still with 

 me. So much has already been said of this last 

 species in former chapters that I might appear to be 

 giving him too great prominence to bring him in 

 again. Yet I must do so just to relate a little scene I 

 witnessed in which this bird had a principal part, the 

 other characters being donkeys. 



The donkey is almost the only domestic creature one 

 meets with out on the rough high moor and among 



