130 BIRD STUDIES WITH A CAMERA 



may be applied to many of the rocky islets of the 

 gulf, in the latter it relates exclusively to ihe Bird 

 Rocks at the northeastern end of the Magdalen 

 group. 



Perc^ Rock, Bonaventure Island, the Magdalens, 

 and the Bird Rocks themselves seemed to offer the 

 best oijportunities to the bird photographer, and, 

 accompanied by my best assistant, I departed for the 

 first named on July 2, 1898. 



Percd Rock" (so named because its base has been 

 pierced by the action of the waves) lies about three 

 hundred feet off the land at the town of Perc^ on 

 the west side of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 



A semiweekly steamer from Dalhousie, near the 

 head of Bay of Chaleur, furnishes the regular means 

 of communication with Perce, and the town at once 

 possesses a distinction over any place on the line of 

 a railway. For, aside from every other reason, there 

 is a pervasiveness about the smoke of a railway 

 locomotive which contaminates the atmosphere and 

 robs local influences of half their potency. Doubt- 

 less there are persons who would be glad to change 

 the aroma of Perci^'s fishyards for the stifling air of 

 a railway tunnel, but give me the pungent odor of 

 Percy's drying cod unadulterated. 



Even the steamer does not touch Perc^, and we 

 were landed by a boat in a sea just rough enough to 

 make the experience interesting. At the pier no 

 hotel agent greeted us, for Perce possesses neither 

 hotel nor boarding house, and summer resorters are 

 almost unknown. This was a delightful discovery. 

 We had come in search of an isolated colony of 

 birds, and we found also an isolated colony of man 



