August, 1921 
FOREST AND STREAM 
359 
fire, your meal all your own cooking 
(don’t sound good? — try it) ; and your 
bed plucked from the nearby spruces. 
I assure you that if you stay there 
for a time, cook your beans in a bean 
hole, fry your fish on an open fire, boil 
your coffee in a pail suspended over the 
fire by a stick, sleep in an old log camp 
with the wood mice and hedgehogs, you 
will come home a new man, a man with 
a new education, a man who will mi- 
grate back to the woods every year re- 
gardless of all obstacles, and one who 
will take on a new lease of life with- 
out hardly knowing the cause. 
The call of the wild is irresistable 
once you have answered it, for it rings 
back through the ages to the time be- 
fore histories were written, and it 
clings to the very roots of our nature, 
where the arts of civilization can never 
erase it, and we will answer it so long 
as the old world stands. 
Chas L. Surns, Maine. 
CLIFF CLIMBERS FOR SEA-BIRD’S 
EGGS 
To the Editor of Forest and Stream: 
G ATHERING eggs in the hay-mow 
is a light task as compared with 
gathering the eggs of sea-birds from 
the face of towering cliffs that over- 
hang the sea at a dizzy height. Along 
the rocky coast of Yorkshire, in north- 
eastern England, thousands of sea- 
birds congregate and make their nests. 
They find plenty of sheltered crannies 
on the face of the high cliffs, and here 
they lay their eggs. 
The art of reaching these nests in 
this perilous position has been mas- 
tered by a sturdy Yorkshireman, Wil- 
liam Wilkinson, who has been enabled 
for more than twenty-five years to earn 
a good living through the sale of eggs. 
Of course in order to reach these nests 
he must have help, which is furnished 
by three other men who take their 
places at the top of the cliff. The main 
helper takes his position where slots 
have been cut in the earth. Into these 
he places his heels to brace himself. 
He wears a heavy leather girdle, and 
around this is passed the main rope 
supporting the cradle, or stout web 
sling, in which the egg-gatherer is 
seated. The other helpers seat them- 
selves in front of the human captain 
and get a firm hold on the main rope, 
regulating its passage as it is paid out. 
When everything is in readiness, Wil- 
kinson drives a stout iron stake into 
the cliff top, with another rope attach- 
ed, which he uses as a hand rope to 
help his companions on the top and to 
signal to them just what to do. 
For instance, one pressure of the 
rope means that more guide rope is to 
be paid out; two pressures, or Jarts as 
they call them, meaning to be lowered, 
three jarts meaning to be pulled up. 
Of course when the egg-gatherer wants 
to stop he rests his feet on a ledge and 
that takes his weight off the rope, so 
that the man at the top knows he has 
stopped. 
Before beginning operations for de- 
scending the cliff, one man out of the 
four throws the guide rope over the 
edge of the cliff, keeping good hold of 
it the while. This frightens most of 
the birds off their eggs and they fly 
straight out to sea. The birds that 
decide to cling to their nests have to 
be fairly knocked off before they will 
leave, and all the time they scream at 
this sudden invasion of their homes and 
peck and bite at the egg-gatherer. 
There are four kinds of birds that 
haunt these cliffs whose eggs are taken 
for eating purposes. These include the 
guillemot, the razor-bill, the kittiwake 
and the gull. Most of the eggs are sold 
on the cliff top to the many visitors 
that come here from Scarborough and 
Bridlington. These eggs are generally 
sold at an English penny apiece. The 
shells of these eggs are eagerly sought 
by egg collectors, who are willing to 
Gathering bird’s eggs 
pay fancy prices for what they con- 
sider fancy eggs. Some of the eggs 
with peculiar markings bring as high 
as half a pound sterling. 
The egg-gatherer wears on either side 
of his body stout canvas bags into which 
he puts the eggs as he finds them. Of 
course it often happens that some of 
these eggs are broken whenever some 
pieces of the chalk cliff come tumbling 
down. The egg-gatherer protects his 
own head from these showers of stone 
by wearing a heavy leather helmet, yet 
there are plenty of chances for acci- 
dent, even with this protection. 
Mr. Wilkinson himself is rather reti- 
cent about discussing his adventures on 
the face of the cliffs, but his son tells 
of some of the accidents that have be- 
fallen the sturdy climber. 
“Once when my father was half way 
down the cliff’s surface, the man at the 
top who was holding him lost his foot- 
ing and had got as far as the edge of 
the cliff when two of the other men 
grabbed him by the collar and thereby 
saved them both. This was a near- 
fatal accident and frightened him badly. 
“Once when he was gathering eggs 
a loose stone came tumbling down and 
cut his arm open from elbow to wrist. 
He was under the doctor’s care for sev- 
eral weeks. Stones have struck him 
repeatedly, nearly covering his body 
with bruises. 
“The closest call he had was down at 
a place called Killdevil. The cliff is 
badly weathered there and the least 
move seems to bring down a shower of 
stones. He was working his way along 
a ledge when a large stone fell. It 
crushed through the hard helmet that 
he wore and cut his skull open, knock- 
ing him senseless. The men finally suc- 
ceeded in getting him to the top,- and 
they dressed his head as best they could 
and then sent for the doctor. My 
mother saw him at the moment that he 
was drawn up over the cliff, and natu- 
rally she fainted dead away. He finally 
recovered, but never again will he go 
egg-hunting on the face of old Kill- 
devil.” 
George F. Paul, Illinois. 
THE ROD VS. THE CANE POLE 
To the Editor of Forest and Stream: 
I NEVER tire of reading in your mag- 
azine the letters regarding fishing, 
hunting, trapping and other sports, but 
what interests me most is the stories 
told of “Heap big fishin’ ” in noble 
streams of the mountains and other 
wonderful places where the natural 
bom fighter is found which gives the 
sportsman some real pleasure and 
many exciting moments. However, this 
story has to do with quite a different 
locality, a different species of bass and 
trout, and altogether a different but 
modern way of catching them. 
I have grown up a natural lover of 
outdoor sport. While I was a small boy 
I moved away from some good fishing 
pools in the crystal creeks of Illinois, 
to the so-called “Swamps” of Arkansas. 
Here I have grown up and could tell 
you a lot about the coon, mink, ducks, 
deer and other wild game; something 
about the mosquitoes and buffalo gnats, 
too, but that would take a volume. So 
I will tell you of my luck with the old 
Cane Pole, used as a casting-rod. 
In Mississippi County, in the north- 
eastern part of the State, there are a 
number of lakes and bayous which af- 
ford fine fishing for the striped bass 
and the crappie. In these streams I 
first saw men hauling in fine bass with 
the troll or some kind of fly. The first 
time I tried it a big fellow took fly, line 
and all. I was excited and dropped my 
pole. An old-timer taught me the trick 
and after a few trials I began to land 
a few, and in time became an expert. 
I remember one place in particular 
where all fishermen of my home town 
went to have a big day. It was called 
Swift Water, from the fact that at this 
point of the bayou the water ran more 
shallow than in other place®. The 
stream being full and running level 
during all seasons of the ye«r, it af- 
forded an excellent feeding place for 
the bass. I bagged from six to fifteen 
fine fellows at this place every time I 
