LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN DIVING BIRDS. 183 
resorts of this species. These islands are far too well known and 
have been too often written up to require any elabdrate description 
here. But, for the benefit of those of us who have never been there, 
I am tempted to quote the following short historical and descriptive 
note by Mr. W. Otto Emerson (1904) : 
From the old Spanish chronicles we learn of the discovery of the Farallone 
Islands in 1543 by Ferrelo. It was Sir Francis Drake, however, who gave us 
the first particular description of the “Island of St. James,” as they were then 
known (1579). Drake, it seems, landed to replenish his larder with seal meat. 
Doubtless he laid in a stock of eggs, for a man is never too old a boy to collect 
eggs where they may be had for the taking. In 1775 Bodega and Maurelle, on 
their way up the northwest coast, named the islands “Los Farallones de los 
Frayles,” in honor of the monks who had discovered San Francisco Bay in 
1769, the same year that the Franciscans founded their first mission in Alta 
California, at San Diego. The first settlers on the islands, we know, were Rus- 
sians from the North, who came with Aleuts to fish and seal hunt. There 
remain to-day, on the southeastern part of the island, the well-preserved stone 
walls of their low huts, but. the date of their occupancy is unknown. 
The islands are formed of crystalline granite, a ridge rising many hundred 
feet above the ocean floor. Sugar Loaf Rock in Fishermans Bay is an 
exception, being a conglomerate of coarse gravel standing isolated 185 feet 
above sea level. South Farallone Island is the largest of the group. At 
water line the rocks are of a blackish brown where the ‘surf beats, and then 
above high water mark change to a yellow or light grayish tone over all the 
island, where not occupied by the roosting or nesting areas of the sea fowl 
or changed by the presence of introduced plants, The granite readily yields 
to a pick and offers a firm footing but is rather hard on shoe leather. Shore 
lines are all cut up into great channel-like troughs, with arched grottos run- 
ning far into the rock and filled with gorgeously tinted marine life. There 
are natural bridges, pot holes, and shelving ledges of all descriptions. 
Mr. Walter E. Bryant (1888) says that the California murres 
“begin to arrive on the island in myriad numbers by the first of 
April. Their arrival usually occurs at night, when great numbers 
come suddenly, and perhaps leave the next day; especially are they 
likely to leave soon after coming—and before mating—if a storm 
occurs, returning, of course, later.” 
Nesting—Mr. Milton S. Ray (1904) gives a very good account 
of the main breeding colonies on the Farallones as follows: 
The largest rookeries on the main island are in Great Murre Cave and at 
Tower Point, on East End, on the rocky shelves and terraces below Main Top 
Peak, and on the dizzy sides, from sea to summit, of the Great Arch, the 
natural bridge par excellence, on West End. The birds also breed abundantly 
all along the ridge and in the numberless grottoes along the seashore, while 
the surrounding islets are covered with them in countless thousands. Great 
Murre Cave, which runs in from the ocean on Shulbrick Point, with its vast 
bird population, is a wonder to behold. All ledges and projections, as well 
as the cave floor, were murre covered, and on our approach the great colony 
became a scene of animation, with a vast nodding of dusky heads and a 
ringing concert of gurgling cries. The birds, at first in tens and then in 
