variation in the colour of their plumage. Some of the birds were flying straight along on the business of nest-making intent, whilst others wheeled idly round and round in order to satisfy their curiosity by making a leisurely survey of us and our boat. As far as the eye could see small objects, the sea was covered in every direction by a vast throng of Puffins, Guillemots, and Kazor-bills, many of which gazed in bewildered astonishment at us until the bows of the boat got quite close to them, when they dived with the swiftness and silence of thought and were gone. In front of us stood Borrera sternly guarded by its dark bulwark of forbidding crags, from the topmost edges of which brilliant green slopes of great steei^ness ran upwards until they were lost in the trailing skirts of a luminous white cloud. To our left was Stack Lee, a gigantic pillar of rock rising about three hundred feet out of the ocean. Its sloping upper parts and every available ledge and corner were positively white with Solan Geese sitting on their nests. Such a snow-like mass do these birds present, that we were told on a fine day the Stack may be distinctly seen distance of fort)' miles. from Long Island—a

When we neared our destination the swell was breaking so badly upon the rocks that we had considerable doubts as to whether we should be a1)le to land. A dog we had in the boat evidently thinking that he, at any rate, was equal to the task leapt overboard and tried. He easily reached the rocks, but every time he attempted to land the heavy backwash tore him away, and he would inevitabh' have been drowned had not one of the men seized and dragged him into the boat again.

After a great deal of manaiuvring, accompanied by much excitement on the part of the crew, a

young man had a rope tied round his waist, and went forward to wait for a favourable opportunity to leap ashore. The rope is always used as a safeguard in case of accident. Two men succeeded in effecting a landing, hut the place was considered so dangerous that the rest of us were taken to another part of the island, where it was hoped the swell would be less boisterous. The new place selected was probably a little more sheltered from the waves, but in spite of this it was very dangerous on account of the steej:), sloping rock which was covered with the most slippery sea-weed I ever trod upon. The men we had already landed worked their way along what appeared to be untreadable ledges and round the corners of impassable crags, and flung their rope-ends to us. Whilst they held the boat from drifting away, and two of those on board prevented her from being stove in upon the rocks, Finlay McQuien tied a rope round his l)ody and sprang ashore. My brother and I now doffed our boots and donned each a pair of coarse woollen socks, which Ave had bought on j^urpose for rock-climbing, and prepared to leap. He j^erformed the feat first, and then had his camera and plates sent up to him l)y a method v\diich he devised himself, and is, I think, worth while mentioning for the benefit of other photographers on account of its absolute simplicity and the security it affords fi-ail and costly apparatus. The camera is tied to the middle of a long rope, one end of which is thrown to a man ashore and hauled in by him, whilst the part behind the apparatus is being paid out in such a way as to keep the whole taut, and thus prevent the camera from swinging or touching the rocks.

When it came to my turn to face the rocks the men looked afraid to take me up, and I must

confess frankly that I felt afraid to go. My brother strongly advised me to stay where I was, but this was impossible. I have many times been accused of foolhardiness, hut never once of cowardice; and I could not bear to thiidv that I lacked the necessary courage, so promptly leapt ashore to prove to my own satisfaction that I didn't.

We trudged up the steep cliff, clambering from ledge to ledge and from boulder to boulder, until we came to where the turf clothes the island. Here the Puffins breed in immense numbers, and the clouds of birds that swept past us made a sound like a whirlwind whipping a great bed of dead rushes. As the Forked-Tailed Petrels also nest regularly at the same spot, we began to grope aljout in the burrows for their eggs. I had not investi-gated more than two or three holes before I felt a peculiar

PUFFIN NOOSE stlugiug paiu, and precipitately withdrew my hand, streaming with blood. I had invaded the nest of a Tannny Norrie by mistake, and the owner being at home naturally objected, and administered with great promptitude what she no doubt regarded as a well-deserved punishment for the intrusion. I used to be a little sce[)tical about the stories of Puffins evicting rabbits from their l)urr()ws, but must confess that the back of my unbelief was In'oken tluit day on Borrera. The num found several Forked-Tailed Petrels in their nesting-burrows, and wlicn they were taken

FINLAY McQUIEN CATCHING PUFFINS.

out the gentle little things squirted quantities of oil, varying in colour from amber to orange, from their beaks. It appeared to be ejected through fear, and smelt very strongly when it happened to alight on any part of one's clothing.

Finlay McQuien now began to show us an example of his skill with the fowling-rod amongst the Puffins, which need far more care and deftness to capture than the Fulmar Petrels. The rod used, however, is just the same: a light deal pole about thirteen feet in length, with a hazel twig between two and three feet in length lashed on to the end. To this is securely fastened a running noose of horse-hair and Gannet quills, so cunningly plaited together as to resemble the tapering lash of a carriage whip. The effect of the interwoven quills is that whilst preserving a sufficient amount of flexibility they so stiffen the noose as to make it stand up in the form of an almost perfect circle. The piece of hazel is slightly curved so as to slide easily along the ground, and at the same time elevate the noose sufficiently to enable the fowler to slip it over the head of a bird by a dexterous turn of the wrist. The St. Kildans, one and all, seemed to exercise a kind of uncanny fascination over the Puffins, which they caught one after another with the utmost ease. The whole procedure appeared to be simplicity itself,;ind as I am considered a deft hand with a trout-rod T essayed the task. Creeping up cautiously on my hands and knees I slipped the rod stealthily along in front of me, l)ut to no j)urpose; the birds would not tolerate my apiu'oach and iiew away. I tried again and again, but the noose either waggled about until it scared the fool isli-hx (king little creatures away, (jr I miscalculated my distance

when endeavouring to entangle a victim. Several times an angry Tannny Norie seized the noose in his beak and dragged at it until he so lessened the size of the circle as t(^ make me despair of ever getting it over his head. Each failm-e amused the natives immensely, and they laughed heartily at my expense. However, this only increased my determination, and after a deal of perseverance I succeeded in capturing a bird, to the great delight of my spectators. So successful are the St. Kildans at this kind of sport that Angus Gillies once bagged to his own rod no less than six hundred and twenty Puffins in a single day. In the course of our wanderings on the island we came upon the half-underground dwellings in which the men and women live when they visit the place to pull the wool off their sheep or snare and pluck birds. They are odd kind of houses very dark, uncommonly damp, and weird to a degree seem as if they had owed their existence to—and the first glimmerings of human intelligence. In shape and general appearance they are much like a cleit half-buried in the steep hill-side.

There is a small doorway, through which those using the house are obliged to creep on hands and knees; the fire-pit is half-in and half-out of the house, and the place is illuminated by a stone lamp. I examined this remarkable relic of antiquity with considerable interest, and it appeared to me to have been carefully chosen for its peculiar accidental shape rather than made. It had a hollow in the middle for the reception of oil, and a narrow crevice or gutter running upwards from it to one end for the accommodation of the wick. It was blackened with smoke, and the damp stood upon it

WITH NATURE AND A CAMERA.

in great glistening beads. The St. Kildan visitors sleep on a raised platform covered with straw.

The position of the fire-pit, which is considerably below the level of the floor of the house, is very ingeniously contrived so as to admit of a certain amount of light and heat and yet not have the burning fuel unduly interfered with by the wind. The fire is practically outside the house, but the earth is so piled up around that it rises above the aperture in the wall and forms a kind of chimney, thus preventing the smoke in ordinary weather from being blown inside the house.

There is a somewhat similar structure in St. Kilda known as "The Strong Man's House," on account of the fact that it was built in a single day by the unaided efforts of one man, whose great physical strength is testified to by the huge stones he used in its construction, and whose handiwork is a treasured wonder of all the St. Kildans.

Whilst exploring the interior of one of these temporary dwellings a young man pulled an old worm-eaten wooden ladle from a hole in the wall, and explained that it was used for dividing porridge amongst those who came to work on the island for a while. The condition of the utensil did not set me longing madly after Borrera porridge.

As we sat chatting in semi-darkness it suddenly occurred to Finlay McQuien to ask me, through a younger man who could speak English, to tell them something about London. As they are all so good in St. Kilda I knew it was of no use entering the great metropolis in a competition of that kind, so went at once to the opposite extreme and told the most dreadful stories I could remember or invent of pickpockets and

THE STRONG MAN’S HOUSE.

other bad cbaracters, and sliowed ][cQiiien what they woukl probably do to him if he ever happened to wander so far south. This fetched Jiim, with a vengeance. He seized a lump of timber lying close by, put himself in a slaying attitude, rolled his eyes to heaven, and showed his fine set of pearly-white teeth in imitative rage. I was greatly pleased with the effect I produced, but fear I have sown the seeds of a bitter harvest for any member of the Fagin brotherhood who may happen to cross the path of the champion cragsman of 8t. Kilda.

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