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THE AUK: 
A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF 
ORNITHOLOGY. 
vol. v. April, 1888. 
No. 2. 
THE BIRD ROCKS OF THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE 
IN 1887. 
BY FREDERIC A. LUCAS. 
Three hundred and thirty-two years ago Jacques Cartier, voy¬ 
aging in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, wrote as follows : “We came 
to three islands, two of which are as steep and upright as any 
wall, so that it was not possible to climb them, and between 
them there is a little rock. These islands were as full of birds 
as any meadow is of grass, which there do make their nests, and 
in the greatest of them there was a great and infinite number of 
those that we call Margaulx, that are white and bigger than any 
geese, which were severed in one part. In the other were only 
Godetz, but toward the shore there were of those Godetz and 
great Apponatz, like to those of that island that we above have 
mentioned ; we went down to the lowest part of the least island, 
where we killed above a thousand of those Godetz and Appon¬ 
atz. We put into our boats so many of them as we pleased, for 
in less than one hour we might have filled thirty such boats of 
them. We named them the Islands of Margaulx.” 
While this description, as well as the sentences which immedi¬ 
ately precede it, contains some statements that apparently are at 
variance with existing facts, there is nevertheless good reason to 
believe that Cartier here refers to the Bird Rocks in the Gulf of 
7 
