THROUGH THE PETITE RIGOLET 



walls birches and spruces and firs grew to a 

 respectable size. The hills were white with 

 reindeer moss and the rocks were dark and 

 rugged; no signs of human hands were any- 

 where to be seen. A few great black-backed 

 gulls scolded us as we passed, and three ven- 

 turesome young ones swam out from a rocky 

 island. A female eider occasionally flew ahead 

 of us, and we passed one in a bay that seemed 

 to have but one duckling in tow; the others 

 were probably concealed. A raven croaked 

 from some rocks and we occasionally heard 

 the calls of white-crowned sparrows and black- 

 poll warblers, but aside from these there was 

 little of bird-life. This long passage is in most 

 places fifteen to thirty fathoms deep even close 

 to the shore, and if we had wished to land it 

 would have been necessary, instead of anchor- 

 ing, to tie to the rocks or a tree. 



Just before we emerged from this long canal- 

 like passage we passed a lone salmon-fisher- 

 man tending his nets. How many gulls and 

 eiders and their eggs he had taken was not 

 manifest, but it is to repeated and persistent 

 depredations by his class that the approaching 

 extinction of Labrador water-bird life is due. 

 175 



