264 LIFE OF AUDUBON. 



them respecting my visit, and offered them premiums for rare 

 birds and some of their eggs ; but although they made fair 

 promises, not one of the gang ever came near the Ripley. These 

 people gather all the eider-down they can find, yet, so incon- 

 siderate are they, that they kill every bird that comes in their 

 way. The puflSns and some other birds they massacre in vast 

 numbers for the sake of their feathers. The eggs of gulls, 

 guillemots, and ducks are searched for with care also. So con- 

 stant and persevering are their depredations, that these species, 

 which, according to the accounts of the few settlers I saw in the 

 country, were exceedingly abundant twenty years ago, have 

 abandoned their ancient breeding-places, and removed much 

 farther north, in search of peaceful security. Scarcely, in fact, 

 could I procure a young guillemot before the eggers had left 

 the coast, nor was it until late in July that I succeeded, after 

 the birds had laid three or four eggs each instead of one, and 

 when nature having been exhausted, and the season nearly 

 spent, thousands of these birds left the country without having 

 accomplished the purpose for which they had visited it. This 

 war of extermination cannot last many years more. The eggers 

 themselves will be the first to repent the entire disappearance 

 of the myriads of birds that made the coast of Labrador their 

 summer residence, and unless they follow the persecuted tribes 

 to the northward they must renounce their trade." 



