60 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



they can induce it to take a spring. Both father and mother per- 

 suade it coaxingly; the little one, usually obedient like all young 

 birds, pays no heed to their commands. The father throws himself 

 into the sea before the eyes of his hesitating offspring; the inex- 

 perienced young one remains where he was. More attempts, more 

 coaxing, urgent pressure: at length he risks the great leap and 

 plunges like a falling stone deep into the sea; then, unconsciously 

 obeying his instincts, he works his way to the surface, looks all 

 around over the unending sea, and — is a sea-bird who thenceforth 

 shuns no danger. 



Different again is the life and activity on the bergs chosen as 

 brooding-places by the kittiwakes. Such a hill is the promontory 

 Swartholm, high up in the north between the Laxen and the Por- 

 sanger fjord, not far from the North Cape. I knew well how these 

 gulls appear on their brooding-places. Faber, with his excellent 

 knowledge of the birds of the far North, has depicted it^ as usual, 

 in a few vivid words: 



" They hide the sun when they fly, they cover the skerries when 

 they sit, they drown the thunder of the surf when they cry, they 

 colour the rocks white when they brood." I believed the excellent 

 Faber after I had seen the eider-holms and auk-bergs, and yet I 

 doubted, as every naturalist must, and therefore I ardently desired 

 to visit Swartholm for myself. An amiable Norseman with whom 

 I became friendly, the pilot of the mail steamer by which I travelled, 

 readily agreed to row me over to the breeding-place, and we ap- 

 proached the promontory late one evening. At a distance of six or 

 eight nautical miles we were overtaken by flocks of from thirty to 

 a hundred, sometimes even two hundred kittiwakes flying to their 

 nesting-place. The nearer we approached to Swartholm the more 

 rapid was the succession of these swarms, and the larger did they 

 become. At last the promontory became visible, a rocky wall about 

 eight hundred yards long, pierced by innumerable holes, rising almost 

 perpendicularly from the sea to a height of from four hundred and 

 fifty to six hundred feet. It looked gray in the distance, but with a 

 telescope one could discern innumerable points and lines. It looked 

 as though a gigantic slate had been scratched all over with all sorts 



