SUMMER HOMES OF THE SEA-BIRDS. 83 
proof ; and they could nowise be aroused for the King’s gratifi- 
cation, till one of the corvette’s cannon was loaded and let off, 
making with its peal so dire a thunder-clap against the huge 
cliff, that the birds, old and young alike, leapt out at last, 
alarmed, in greater numbers than ever. 
Above these breeding colonies there often dwells, as a sort of 
recognised robber, a sea-eagle, which can, with one stroke of its 
wings, sweep off a young bird, and so it lives with the colony 
as a matter of course. But if there should appear any un- 
recognised pirate, such as a ger-falcon, it is vehemently and 
persistently assailed by the whole host of the bird-rock, till it 
is right glad to make off to some safer abode. 
From these breeding places there pour southwards the in- 
numerable flocks of birds that mainly swarm over far-distant 
shores, and inland waters, and other places, when the long night 
of the arctic circle compels them all to set forth to seek light, and 
food, and life, in far other regions. Some of them breed, partly, 
further south, along the coasts of the Hebrides, of Scotland, or 
of England ; but it is in these far northern regions that their 
breeding-places are most largely to be met with ; and it is only 
in these lands that some ever breed at all. Indeed, it is from 
districts farther north than these, from lands that no foot of man 
has ever yet trodden, that there flock in, year after year, multi- 
tudes of birds to swell the immense armies that, towards winter, 
pour southwards from the land of the long night. In what 
islands it is that some of the tringas or stints, the plovers, and 
the waders, actually breed, has only been dimly guessed at, but 
never yet actually determined or found. All that we know is 
that the breeding birds disappear northwards out of sight in 
spring, and that they return therefrom with their young, over 
the Arctic Ocean, as winter comes on, to join the mighty host 
that then pours south towards the lands of sunshine. Under the 
southernmost cape, Lindesnaes, the Brent geese pour in at the end 
of May regularly, in straight-lined rows ; therefrom they sweep 
on, in the same fashion, over the sea, along the whole coast till 
they reach its most northern limit ; and they still go northwards 
till they reach their breeding-places in Nova Zembla or Spitz- 
bergen. Arctic travellers that have stood upon the northern 
heights of Spitzbergen have seen these rows of geese wandering 
over the icy sea in search of more farther islands, where no 
human foot has ever yet trodden. And the same thing happens 
with regard to many much smaller birds. 
And it is utterly amazing to learn how far south these most 
northerly breeding birds have been found to go in migration. 
Some of them have been found in Damaraland, far south of the 
equator ; some even so far as Cape Colony. Truly wonderful 
still is this yearly migration of the birds. We seem, even yet, 
to have got not much farther in our exact knowledge of these 
migrations than did the old poet when, with nothing but a 
poet’s sympathy with this marvel, he asked : — 
