IN AUDUBON'S LABRADOR 



The Indian portage path led up through the 

 thick spruce forest, which reverberated with 

 the roar of the unseen falls, to the rocky ledges 

 above. Over these the water dashed down 

 for more than a hundred feet into a dark for- 

 est-girt pool, where the trees waved in the 

 blasts and the smokelike spray rose in clouds. 

 The great bounding waves seemed to poise in 

 the air before the final plunge, and the roar 

 was deafening. From a distance these foaming 

 falls looked like a great patch of snow on the 

 hillside. 



On another occasion we sailed to some rocky 

 islands and found the nests of great black- 

 backed gulls with their large spotted eggs, the 

 ilests of herring gulls, of common terns, and of 

 eiders. In one of the latter, containing six 

 olive-green eider eggs, there were four addi- 

 tional eggs l9,id by a black duck, smaller and 

 of a drab color. All were smothered in the 

 warm gray down plucked from the breast of 

 the female eider whom we scared from the 

 nest. As we rounded a point we came on sev- 

 eral broods of eider ducklings with their moth- 

 ers. One group of five dived repeatedly and 

 scattered in all directions, while the mother 



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