434 
THE ErirER. 
SCENE AT BAFl'IN-'s ISLANDS. 
heads, for a similar reason. It was fine sport for all 
hands to gather eggs from the rocky crevices in which 
they huild. The birds, when disturbed by our preda- 
tory visits, literally darkened the air ; and their quick, 
sharp cries, the hum of their wings flapping around 
us, and the surging noise of the sea as it broke against 
the base of their fortress below, all together might have 
startled a novice in the trade of plunder. It was 
something like " gathering samphire." 
We found the eider also very numerous. In the 
selection of their nests, I remarked that these birds 
avoid the soft and apparently wind-protected slopes ; 
a wise instinct,. as the drip from the melted snows 
would expose them to wet there. They choose gener- 
ally the knobbed face of some summit, where coarse 
sedges and mosses grow against the stone. Some- 
times the nest is a mere depression in the moss, sparse- 
ly lined with down; but more generally it is con- 
