by the wings of flapping gulls and cormorants.
The Rock is more than 1400 feet in length. The prow-shaped or landward end measures 288 feet from tip to base, the broad sea end, 154 feet. Beyond is the outer column of a mighty arch which collapsed over seventy years ago. A French writer of 1675 said there were then three perforations. In 1815 the centre one had been so expanded by the force of the waves that boats in full sail could pass through. Forty years ago the present large opening, high enough to accommodate a thirty-foot mast, was only twelve inches across. Many incipient arches show on the sides. One has pierced the pillar that stands astern. Masses of rock fall each year. Imbedded in the flaming stone are millions of fossils so rare that weighty treatises have been inscribed upon them.
A hundred years ago several tons of hay were cut every summer from the slanting summit, the feat being accomplished by means of ropes and an ingenious scaffolding. But Peter the Eagle once ventured too daringly on a sheer point of rock and fell to his death. Those in charge of the community's well-being from that time forth forbade the ascent. Recently, complaints reached the Government that the cormorants which for untold decades have shared the top of the Rocher Percé with nesting gulls were destroying the salmon nets of Mai Bay fishermen. A youth from Bonaventure Island who inherits the temerity of a
