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DRAWN By C, M, RELYEA. ‘ 
PHOTOGRAPHING THE BIRDS FROM THE CAR. 
CENTURY MAGAZINE. 
Audubon’s disappointment when his pilot 
told him that it was too rough to go ashore 
upon the rock. However, they launched a 
whale-boat, which, manned by Audubon’s 
son John and four others, went to the lee 
of the rock, but returned at the end of an 
hour without having made a landing. 
Audubon’s account, like that of Cartier, 
tells of the destruction of the birds nest- 
ing on the rock. The gannets, he states, 
were killed by fishermen for use as bait 
in cod-fishing. Armed with clubs, “the 
men strike them down and kill them until 
fatigued or satisfied. Five hundred and 
forty have been thus murdered in one hour 
by six men.” 
This slaughter was evidently attended 
by some danger; for not only do the sit- 
ting birds bite viciously, but old fishermen 
in the Magdalens tell me that if the in- 
truder on the gannets’ domain on the sum- 
mit of the rock should happen to have 
been caught in a rush of stampeded birds, 
he could with difficulty have avoided be- 
ing carried off the edge of the cliff. 
The first naturalist who actually set 
foot on Bird Rock was Dr. Henry Bryant 
of Boston, who landed there June 23, 
1860. This was before the days of the 
lighthouse, and Dr. Bryant reached the 
top of the rock after a climb which he 
characterizes as both “difficult and dan- 
gerous.” In addition to the gannets which 
occupied the ledges on the face of the 
rock, he found these birds nesting over 
the entire northerly half of the summit; 
and by measuring the surface occupied 
by them, he estimated that this one colony 
alone contained no fewer than a hundred 
thousand birds, while the number living 
on the sides of the rock and on Little 
Bird he placed at fifty thousand. 
When Mr. C. J. Maynard visited the 
rock, in June, 1872, he found that the 
colony of gannets on its summit consisted 
