It is an extremely important thing to have a couple of fairly strong, level-headed men to pay out and haul in the descending rope. It is of no use taking men who would be likely to -.interpret the first weird cry of a sea-bird as coming from the photographer in distress a hundred feet below, and have their hearts frightened into their boots it is equallyaccordingly. On the other hand, dangerous to have men assisting who underestimate the gravity of the situation, and consequently grow careless.

Witp Lirrk at Home.

THE WRONG WAY To DE:

Assuming that

the right sort of

men are assisting,

and that the tackle

may be depended

upon, the photographer dons the

loops at the end

of the descending

ropes, and prepares

to walk backwards

over the edge of

the cliff, as shown

in the illustration

The two

gentlemen figuring

in the picture as

rope - manipulators

are both closely

identified with

British ornithology

—the one nearest

my brother being

the son of Dr.

Saxby, of Shetland - bird fame,

and the other Mr.

Laurence Edmondston, the Laird of

Unst, and pro-on p. 22.

PHOTOGRAPHING IN CLIFFS, ETC.

tector of the great skuas still breeding on Herma Ness. Many in fact, I might say nearly all cliff -climbers, when making their first descent, instead of stepping boldly over and trusting to their

ropes, instinctively clutch and cling to the face of the crag, as shown in our illustration on p. 24, and invariably lose a liberal amount of skin from their knees and elbows upon sharp pro-jections of rock as they go. Of course, to the man who is

looking on, especially from the bottom, it looks a comparatively easy matter, but it is

THE KIGHT WAY TO DESCEND.

not quite so simple as it looks. The reasoning powers of the climber tell him that he is as safe as the Bank of England, but his original instincts of self-preservation are in this instance stronger, and make him believe that he is not.

Our illustration on page 25 shows how to step boldly out over the edge of a cliff, trusting implicitly to the ropes and the men who are attending to them. Even then an overhanging crag requires very careful treatment until the climber swings clear of it and becomes quite insulated, as shown in the picture opposite, because in walking down its face his feet, especially if he makes a descent in his boots, are likely to slip out, in which case his body would of necessity strike heavily against the rock.

A very good bit of preliminary training for the would-be cragsman in the use of climbing-ropes is to get a friend to lower him over a high garden wall or down some miniature cliff. It will give him a capital insight into the business, and beget a deal of confidence. I went down a rough overhanging crag seventy feet deep the very first time I donned the climbing-ropes, but it required al the nerve and resolution I could summon; and I would strongly recommend the novice to try a cliff' of modest dimensions for a start, unless he be gifted with a head as cool as ice and nerves of iron. One very important precaution in fact, so far as the descender's safety depends upon his own

DBSCEITDING AX OVKKUA.NUI.VG CLIFF.

actions, the most important is to clear away all the loose stones and rubble between the crowbar and solid rock-edge of such a precipice as that which the picture on p. 29 represents my brother in the act of going down. If this very imperative piece of work be neglected, the lowering rope is sure to pull them out when he is being drawn up again; and woe betide the hardest head or best-built camera struck by even a moderate-sized stone with a velocity upon it gained by a perpendicular drop of fifty or sixty feet.

Whilst in the Shetlands last spring we had a narrow escape from an accident of this kind. We induced a young fellow to take us to a place where he knew of a white-tailed or sea-eagle's eyrie on a ledge in the face of a cliff some two hundred and fifty feet in height. When we reached the place our hearts bounded again with excitement, for the great bird flung herself lazily off the ledge into space within gunshot of us, and majestically flapped her way seawards with the bright morning sunlight glinting on her back and a small unheeded crowd of noisy gulls mobbing her.

The prospect of adding a photograph of her eyrie and eggs or young to our collection so excited my brother that in descending he did not exercise the necessary care in clearing away every stone in his path, with the result that in returning he had the horror of seeing the rope drag a good-sized one from its bed beneath a tuft of grass. Luckily

for him he saw

it coming, and

by a dexterous

swing out from

the rock manto let it

between

him and the

face of the cliff,

without sustaining anything worse

than a glancing blow

on his left thigh.

Unfortunately, the

eyrie had nothing in

it but feathers, and

did not appear to

have been used during

the season for breed- DESCENDING A

LOOSE-FACED CLIFF.

ing purposes, although

we put the bird off it once, and saw her return to it in the afternoon of the same day.

Another indispensable precaution in descending a cliff with ropes is to see that the one sustaining the weight of the cragsman's body does not run over such sharp projecting rocks as will be likely to damage it by chafing, or in narrow crevices that will hinder it from running freely up and down.

In no case is it wise when making a descent to diverge far from a supposed perpendicular line drawn from the crowbar to the bottom of the crag in order to take advantage of anything like an easier path or to get to a nest to right or left, because such a course is fraught with danger. It is far better to be drawn up, and make a fresh descent, than to risk snapping one's ropes and being precipitated two or three hundred feet into the sea below. Cliff-climbing is very exhilarating work, and when once the climber becomes used to it. and has confidence in his ropes and assistants, it assumes something very like a fascination over its votaries, who keep on thirsting after a higher crag every time they go forth. The St. Kildans positively love their rocks, and told me that they could not live without the exercise they get in climbing upon them. Some people talk of their inability to look over a high cliff because of a queer instinctive desire to throw themselves into the yawning chasm below.

I know nothing myself of this strange sensation, therefore cannot properly appreciate it, and I am quite sure that my brother is worse off in a supply of weak nerves of this kind than I am. A friend of ours said to me one day, whilst on our way to make a descent over which he considered we were rather light-hearted. " You fellows have to do the work and run the risk, and I've only to sit and look on; but I wish I could view the business with as much equanimity as you appear to do." Probably we do view this kind of work with a certain amount of equanimity, but we never under-estimate its dangers or allow familiarity to breed contempt. it would be uselessWe thoroughly recognise that to take care after an accident, so we use plenty of it, good reliable tackle and the most capable assistants we can procure, and have in consequence a great deal of confidence.

In paying out the rope to the descender it is necessary to do so from behind the crowbar, and not to allow it to slip away in jerks, as such a procedure makes it exceedingly unpleasant for the man who is dangling in mid-air fifty or sixty feet below, and might possibly snap an indifferent piece of hemp. Where assistance is easily procurable we get a man to signal from some convenient point my brother's requirements by a preconcerted code of arm-movements, somewhat after the manner of railway-carriage shunters; but where it is not, and

this is in the generality of places, we manage by calls. For more rope the cry is a long-drawn "slaak," and for enough a short, sharp "stop." These signals are, however, very difficult to catch and distinguish at times when on big sea-cliffs, on account of the boom of the waves below and the crying and Availing of the seafowl. No talking ought to be indulged in by the people round the crowbar, as it interferes with the hearing and proper understanding of the photographer's wants.

In the case of a ledge, sufficiently large to walk along and fix the camera up on being encountered, it is never wise to let go the ropes, however inconvenient they may become, especially if the ledge has been gained by a swing in. An acquaintance of ours, upon descending to a white tailed eagle's eyrie situated on a ledge in the face of an ocean cliff, did this, and in consequence had a rather perilous time of it. When he desired to retrace his steps he found that he could not reach his ropes, and dared not risk a leap out and the chance of missing them. His only alternative was a difficult zigzagging climb along the face of the crag, which, after a deal of hesitation, he essayed and succeeded in safely accomplishing.

The best way to take a camera and tripod down a cliff is to sling them over the back of the photographer, as shown in our illustrations, for then they do not impede his progress or inconvenience him in any way. Having got down to an eyrie,

the next thing is to slip two of the legs of the tripod through a belt fastened round the waist, one on the right and the other on the left, and the third into any convenient crevice or fissure in the rock. The focussing must be done with the camera practically resting on the chest, and the body of the photographer in a position almost at right angles to the line of the precipice. It is somewhatdifficult work. However, the example on this page, representing a shag's nest and eggs some fifty or sixty feet down a sea-cliff, shows what may be

WILD LIFE AT HOME.

accomplished by the gymnastic camera-man. Of course it would be a much easier and far simpler matter to take a hand-camera down and make studies with it. We have never used one, however, for the purpose, on account of the difficulty of using a lens of fixed focus at close quarters and inability to measure the distance. Windy weather is quite unsuitable for rope work or cliff work of any kind, and is extremely aggravating to the naturalist with a limited amount of time on SHAG STRETCHING HEKSELF hand. However, it is better to lie by and wait with as much patience as possible than to risk an accident through mere foolhardiness.

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