THE TEOPIC BIRD. 
329 
James Cook and his comrades. Among the feathers are 
many from the tropic birds. In the Missionary Yoyage of the 
ship ^Duif^ in 1796-1798^ an interesting account is given 
of the manner in which the natives collected these feathers. 
The tropic birds build their nests,, like terns and other sea- 
birds^ in holes of the cliffs^ and as the natives hold their 
long feathers ^^in request for their paries and mourning 
dresses, they procure them in the following dangerous 
manner. From the top of the high cliffs, beaten by the 
waves beneath, a man is lowered down by a rope, seated 
across a stick ; he searches all the holes from bottom to top, 
swinging from point to point by a staff he holds in his hand, 
and by the stones which project or the shrubs which grow 
there. When he finds a bird on her nest, he plucks out her 
tail-feathers and lets her fly.^^ In this way, like the natives 
of St. Kilda, Poula, and other remote Scottish islands, the 
natives of the South Sea Islands used to pursue these birds, 
and when they could find no more, or were tired, they made 
a signal and werei drawn up. To a stranger it seemed very 
perilous employment for a human being to be dangling by 
a rope thirty or forty fathoms long, and perhaps one or two 
hundred feet above the sea. The missionaries record how- 
ever that but few accidents occurred, though the sport was 
often continued for several successive hours. 
