Page:Audubon and His Journals.djvu/448

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394
AUDUBON

some stupendous rock, and the gale continues as if it would never stop. On rambling about the shores of the numerous bays and inlets of this coast, you cannot but observe immense beds of round stone of all sizes, some of very large dimensions rolled side by side and piled one upon another many deep, cast there by some great force of nature. I have seen many such places, and never without astonishment and awe. If those great boulders are brought from the bottom of the sea, and cast hundreds of yards on shore, this will give some idea of what a gale on the coast of Labrador can be, and what the force of the waves. I tried to finish my drawing of the Loon, but in vain; I covered my paper to protect it from the rain, with the exception only of the few inches where I wished to work, and yet that small space was not spared by the drops that fell from the rigging on my table; there is no window, and the only light is admitted through hatches.

July 11. The gale, or hurricane, or whatever else the weather of yesterday was, subsided about midnight, and at sunrise this morning it was quite calm, and the horizon fiery red. It soon became cloudy, and the wind has been all round the compass. I wished to go a hundred miles farther north, but the captain says I must be contented here, so I shall proceed with my drawings. I began a Cormorant and two young, having sent John and Lincoln for them before three this morning; and they procured them in less than half an hour. Many of the young are nearly as large as their parents, and yet have scarcely a feather, but are covered with woolly down, of a sooty black. The excursions brought in nothing new. The Shore Lark has become abundant, but the nest remains still unknown. A tail feather of the Red-tailed Hawk, young, was found; therefore that species exists here. We are the more surprised that not a Hawk nor an Owl is seen, as we find hundreds of sea-birds devoured, the wings only remaining.