CRUISE OF LA BELLE MARGUERITE 
deep holes in the hard bank with their feeble 
claws and bill is always a mystery. It only 
shows what persistence will do, and the same 
lesson was taught by the great cross gullies, or 
canyons, made in these cliffs by little rivulets, 
that had been slowly cutting down to sea level, 
or perhaps had always remained at sea level 
as the cliffs were gradually elevated. 
On the way we stopped to watch a single 
northern phalarope, sitting like a miniature 
swan in the water and pirouetting about in the 
stormy waves. The bird proved to be a female. 
It is interesting to remember that among the 
phalaropes the females are larger and more 
brightly coloured than the males, that they do 
the courting, and that they leave to the down- 
trodden husband the duties of incubation and 
care of the young. They are suffragettes with 
a vengeance. 
At Faux Pas Island, a gravelly and grassy 
bank of a few acres in extent, we landed and 
feasted our eyes on our first saddle-back’s or 
great black-backed gull’s nest. A conspicuous 
object it was, over four feet across, made of 
roots, grasses and seaweed, and built over a 
derelict tree trunk. Inside it measured ten 
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