158 BIRD STUDIES WITH A CAMERA 
hurried, fearful confusion as to throw each other 
down, often falling on each other until there is a 
bank of them many feet high. The men strike 
them down and kill them until fatigued or satisfied. 
Five hundred and forty have been thus murdered 
in one hour by six men. The birds are skinned 
with little care, and the flesh cut off in chunks; it 
will keep fresh about a fortnight. So great is the 
destruction of these birds annually that their flesh 
supplies the bait for upward of forty fishing boats 
which lie close to Bryon Island, each summer.” 
This slaughter was evidently attended by some 
danger, for not only did the sitting birds bite vi- 
ciously, but old fishermen in the Magdalens state 
that if the invader of the Gannets’ domain on the 
summit of the Rock should have happened to be 
caught in a rush of stampeded birds, he could with 
difficulty have avoided being carried off the edge of 
the cliff. 
In concluding his description of the Rock, Audu- 
bon says: “No man who has not seen what we have 
this day can form the least idea of the impression 
the sight made on our minds.” One need not bea 
naturalist, therefore, to realize the depth of his dis- 
appointment when the pilot told him that the wind 
was too high to permit them to land on the Rock. 
However, they did not leave without at least mak- 
ing an attempt. A boat was launched, manned by 
the pilot, two sailors, Audubon’s son John, and Tom 
Lincoln, for whom Lincoln’s Finch, discovered sub- 
sequently in Labrador, was named; but after an 
hour’s absence they returned without having made 
a landing, and the increasing force of the wind com- 
