138 AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



makes the passage to Great Britain, by following the 

 ships and finding them at convenient distances along 

 the route, and I have been told that over fifty different 

 species of our more common birds, such as robins, 

 starlings, grosbeaks, thrushes, etc., have been found in 

 Ireland, having, of course, crossed in this way. What 

 numbers of these little navigators of the air are misled 

 and wrecked during those dark and stormy nights, on 

 the light-houses alone that line the Atlantic Coast? 

 Is it Celia Thaxter who tells of having picked up her 

 apron full of sparrows, warblers, flycatchers, etc., at 

 the foot of the light-house, on the Isles of Shoals, one 

 morning after a storm, the ground being still strewn 

 with birds of all kinds that had dashed themselves 

 against the beacon, bewildered and fascinated by its 

 tremendous light ? 



If a land bird perishes at sea, a sea bird is equally 

 cast away upon the land, and I have known the sooty 

 tern, with its almost omnipotent wing, to fall down 

 utterly famished and exhausted, two hundred miles 

 from salt water. 



But my interest in these things did not last beyond 

 the third day. About this time we entered what the 

 sailors call the "devil's hole," and a very respectably 

 sized hole it is, extending from the Banks of New- 

 foundland to Ireland, and in all seasons and weathers 

 it seems to be well stirred up. 



Amidst the tossing and the rolling, the groaning of 

 penitent travellers, and the laboring of the vessel as she 



