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BIRD-CATCHING. 
Diminished to her cock ; her cock, a buoy, 
Almost too small for sight : the murmuring surge, 
That on the unnumbered idle pebbles chafes. 
Cannot be heard so high. I’ll look no more ; 
Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight 
Topple down headlong. 
Such is the beautiful description of Dover Cliff by Shak- 
speare ; but what would he have said, could he have looked 
down from this precipice in St. Kilda, which is nearly three 
times higher, and so tremendous, that one who was accus- 
tomed to regard such sights with indifference, dared not 
venture to the edge of it alone ? But, held by two of the 
islanders, he looked over into what might be termed a world 
of rolling mists and contending clouds. As these occasion- 
ally broke and dispersed, the ocean was disclosed below, but 
at so great a depth, that even the roaring of its surf, dashing 
with fury against the rocks, and rushing with a noise like 
thunder into the caverns it had formed, was unheard at this 
stupendous height. The brink was wet and slippery, — the 
rocks perpendicular from their summit to their base ; and 
yet, upon this treacherous surface, the St. Kilda people 
approached, and sat upon the extremest verge; the youngest 
of them even creeping down a little way from the top, after 
eggs or birds, building in the higher range, which they 
take in great numbers, by means of a slender pole like 
a fishing-rod, at the end of which was fixed a noose of 
cow-hair, stiffened at one end with the feather of a Solan 
Goose. 
But these pranks of the young are nothing when com- 
pared to the fearful feats of the older and more experienced 
practitioners. Several ropes of hide and hair are, first tied 
together to increase the depth of his descent. One 
extremity of these ropes, so connected, is of hide, and the 
end is fastened, like a girdle, round his waist. The other 
extremity is then let down the precipice, to a considerable 
depth, by the adventurer himself, standing at the edge: 
when, giving the middle of the rope to a single man, he 
