THE BEACH. 
65 
sea-weed. ‘‘ The poles on the top are covered with lean 
whale. The man being placed within, is not discovered 
by the fowls, and while they are contending for and 
eating the flesh, he draws them in, one by one, between 
the poles, until he has collected forty or fifty.” Hence, 
perchance, a man is said to be gulled, when he is taken 
in. We read that one ^‘sort of gulls is called by the 
Dutch mallemucke, i. e. the foolish fly, because they fall 
upon a whale as eagerly as a fly, and, indeed, all gulls 
are foolishly bold and easy to be shot. The Norwegians 
call this bird havhest, sea-horse (and the English trans¬ 
lator says, it is probably what we call boobies). If they 
have eaten too much, they throw it up, and eat it again 
till they are tired. It is this habit in the gulls of part¬ 
ing with their property [disgorging the contents of their 
stomachs to the skuas], which has given rise to the 
terms gull, guller, and gulling, among men.” We also 
read that they used to kill small birds which roosted on 
the beach at night, by making a fire with hog’s lard in 
a frying-pan. The Indians probably used pine torches ; 
the birds flocked to the light, and were knocked down 
with a stick. We noticed holes dug near the edge of 
the bank, where gunners conceal themselves to shoot 
the large gulls which coast up and down a-fishing, for 
these are considered good to eat. 
We found some large clams, of the species Mactra 
solidissima, which the storm had torn up from the bot¬ 
tom, and cast ashore. I selected one of the largest, 
about six inches in length, and carried it along, thinking 
to try an experiment on it. We soon after met a 
wrecker, with a grapple and a rope, who said that he 
was looking for tow cloth, which had made part of the 
cargo of the ship Franklin, which was wrecked here in 
£ 
