TRANSPARENCY OF THE WATER. lOj 



of 65 barrels of eggs and take them to the States or up 

 the St. Lawrence River to Quebec or Montreal. Of late 

 years they would give half of what they found to the 

 settlers on the coast as hush-money. When collecting 

 the eggs they would make "caches" of them, covering 

 the heaps with moss ; and if they w«re on the point of 

 being caught they would smash the whole cargo of eggs 

 rather than be seized with them. Many are the adven- 

 tures which the eggers have passed through, and the 

 stories told of them rival the tales of smugglers and pri- 

 vateersmen on more favored shores. They still collect 

 and wantonly destroy the eggs of murres. 



The eggs of the eider-ducks we found to make a good 

 omelet, but those of the murres and gulls were too fishy 

 to be palatable ; the food of the murres and puffin as well 

 as gulls consisting largely of small fish, such as capelin 

 and lance fish {Ammodytes). We saw male eiders two 

 years old ; they were brown with a little white ; we were 

 told that the eider is four years in arriving at maturity ; 

 the guillemot only two years ; the puffins and murres 

 becoming adult in one year. The eider-duck is easily 

 domesticated, and the young will follow a person to 

 whom they are accustomed like a dog. 



As soon as our vessel came into shallow water, — and in 

 our boat excursions we were constantly impressed by the 

 transparency of the water on this coast — we could look 

 down for thirty or forty feet and see with distinctness the 

 bottom with dark masses of sea-urchins and starfish. 

 The water is more transparent than on the Florida coast. 

 Indeed the fishermen sometimes complain of this prop- 

 erty of the water, saying that the fish can see the nets too 

 readily and do not enter them. The water is so clear 



