2448 Letters of Rusticus. 



the turf, we quietly peeped over the edge of the cliff, and obtained an excellent view 

 of the amiable company, from which a stench arose almost enough to suffocate us. 

 There were young ones of 'all sizes, — some almost ready to fly, some only covered with 

 down ; some nests had one or two eggs, which are very small in proportion to the 

 size of the bird, and of a dirty white colour : many hens were sitting, and here and 

 there a solitary old cock (the crested corvorant of Bewick) was perched on his triple 

 support of tail and feet, contemplating the expanse of ocean as motionless as a statue. 

 One of the party now determined on the hazardous experiment of leaning over the 

 cliff and shooting them as they sat ; the other two remonstrated, but to no purpose : 

 so a line was formed ; the first held tight the coat-tails of the shooter, the others 

 locked hand in hand ; thus making a dead weight of four against one, in case of any 

 propensity on the part of the first to lose his balance. Thus arranged, the adventurer 

 shouldered his double-barrelled, and, actually bending over the cliff, he pulled the 

 trigger. An old corvorant fell five hundred feet down the cliff, upon the little narrow 

 beach before mentioned ; another trigger was pulled, and down went another corvo- 

 rant. The shooter then exchanged guns with him who held him by the coat-tails, 

 and with each barrel of this he also sent a corvorant to the bottom ; so there were 

 four, as we supposed, quietly waiting our return. Emboldened by this success, we 

 proceeded more than a mile along the top of the cliff, continually peeping over. We 

 discovered two nests of a gull (perhaps the herring-gull), each with three eggs, of an 

 olive-brown colour, with darker spots : the nests are made of dried grass and fern. 

 The fishermen told us that these gulls will lay three eggs again, if the first three are 

 taken, and three more when the second three are taken, but no more than this, nine 

 being the whole stock for one year. But the greatest curiosity we observed was the 

 nestless and solitary egg of the guillemot, balanced, as if by a geometrician, on the 

 bare rock, and looking as though the least puff of wind would blow it off its station 

 into the sea. We learned from the fishermen, and some boys of the neighbourhood, 

 that the puffins never expose their eggs, like the corvorants, razor-bills, guillemots 

 and gulls, but lay them at the end of long holes, which they hollow out of the softer 

 parts of the rock. We bought a few of these eggs to bring home ; they were dirty 

 white, with darker spots. 



" Along the circuitous edge of this cliff the egg-collectors plant the iron crow-bars 

 for attaching the ropes by means of which they descend. Two ropes are commonly 

 used ; one goes round the body, and the other is held in the hand : the first is warped 

 round the crow-bar, so as to be let out at pleasure ; the second is fixed to it by a noose, 

 and when the suspended sportsman wishes to reascend, he shakes this second rope as 

 a signal, and two men on the top of the cliff begin hauling at the first, or waist-rope, 

 while he assists the operation by climbing up the second, hand over hand. The crow- 

 bar is rarely stuck so deep as eight inches in the ground, so that at every movement 

 of the collector it may be seen to give most fearfully ; but impunity creates valour, 

 and as no ill has yet resulted from this careless mode of planting the bar, they seem 

 to fear none. At some parts of the face of the cliff are shelving ledges of the most 

 slippery turf, and when arrived at these, the collector throws off his waist-rope, and 

 walks or clambers along for fifty or a hundred feet, and sometimes even more. This, 

 though less striking to a stranger than the act of dangling from a rope, after the 

 fashion of a spider from his thread, is in fact the most dangerous feat of all, for the 

 slightest slip is fatal. Another constant source of danger is the detaching of small 

 pieces of rock or loose stones, by the friction of the rope against the cliff: to avoid 



