# Memoirs of Travel, Sport and Natural History/Chapter 2

Memoirs of Travel, Sport and Natural History by Henry John Elwes was first published in London in 1930, and edited by Edward G. Hawke
CHAPTER II
ORNITHOLOGY: THE HEBRIDES: TURKEY
I suppose that I inherited a taste for Natural History from my Norfolk grandparents, for Norfolk has always been a great county for Natural History. On my grandfather's property at Congham the last Great Bustards in Britain laid their eggs, and when a boy I used to hear my greataunt, Miss Hamond, tell of seeing a flock of sixteen together on Massing ham Heath. It was natural that a love of birds should have been my earliest interest in life. In those days all country boys went bird-nesting, and at my first school near Tunbridge Wells, as I have related, it was our greatest joy. There was then no sentiment about taking eggs, as many as possible, and the rarer the birds the more ruthless one was in hunting for them. When I went to Eton I had already the nucleus of a collection. At home, in the Easter holidays, I used to accompany the old Norfolk keeper when plover egging, and learnt how to watch birds without being seen by them. Before I left Eton at sixteen I knew the correct Latin name of every reputed British bird.
In April, 1865, before going up for the Army examination, I made my first independent expedition to collect birds in company with Mr. A. Crichton. We went to Stromness in Orkney and lodged with J.H. Dunn, the ornithologist, who collected birds and eggs for sale. In those days the railway only went as far as Dingwall, the remainder of the journey to Thurso being done on the last mail coach attended by a red-coated mail guard, who told me that he had been gradually driven north by the railway, and was the last survivor of this service of the Post Office in that capacity. At Stromness I went out shooting in a small boat with Dunn whenever the weather allowed, and used to think that he was over cautious about the weather. But the strong tides and winds in Scapa Flow made boating more hazardous than I then thought, and we had one or two near shaves of being swamped. Dunn, with another companion, was drowned from his own boat some years afterwards on one of these excursions.
On days too windy to shoot on the water I skinned the birds we shot, some of which are now stuffed in my hall. Velvet scoters, long-tailed ducks, eider ducks, mergansers, purple sandpipers, and a Solan goose are among them. The Solan goose, as he fell, disgorged a freshly caught herring, which when cooked was much better eating than the soft cod which was our daily repast, with eggs and bacon and tough mutton chops —about the only fresh food we got.
I began to make notes on birds, some of which are still of interest. Among others I find one on the Sclavonian grebe, which is a regular winter visitor from the north, and remains in some numbers as late as the end of April, when I saw as many as twenty in company. A few pairs no doubt remain and were found breeding in some small shallow hill lochs in Invernessshire.
I received from A.W. Clarke, Esq., of Meddart, Ross-shire, some eggs among which were a white-tailed eagle's egg taken at Whiten Head; also a ​genuine fieldfare's egg taken by him from a nest of four in the Duchess of Sutherland's park. The breeding of this bird in Scotland is a very rare occurrence which has not been recorded recently as far as I know.
When we returned to London from Shorncliffe in the autumn of 1865 I lived in my father's house in Portman Square, and was fortunate enough to make friends with Mr. F.D. Godman, Lord Lilford and Mr. H.E. Dresser, all now keen ornithologists who had a few years previously founded at Cambridge the British Ornithologists' Union, and who contributed to the pages of the Ibis papers which set the high standard of accuracy and thoroughness that have distinguished British ornithologists ever since. I became a member of the Union in 1866 and have belonged to it ever since. All its founders, except the brothers Godman, have now departed, but their example and their work live, and it is largely owing to their influence that I continued my studies in ornithology, which certainly taught me a great deal that was afterwards most useful when I took up butterflies and plants. I now began to realise that Natural History had more pleasures for me than a military life. Every bit of leave I could get was spent in shooting and collecting.
In 1866 I paid my first visit to the island of Islay, staying there with a gamekeeper named Legg, who allowed me to shoot over a large area of land on which wildfowl were numerous, and there I killed five species of wild geese. In Loch Indail there were a good many brent geese which fed on the Zostera which grows abundantly there, and there I had a narrow escape from drowning, owing to the capsizing of a boat whose rudder broke at a critical moment. Though encumbered with thick clothes and in a heavy surf, I just managed to struggle into water where I could touch bottom between the waves; but the boatman, who knew the depth better than I did, was so scared that he forgot the little English he knew, and I very nearly swam into deep water again before he warned me of my clanger. My gun I recovered at low tide two days afterwards, not much the worse for the salt water.
On a sandy island covered with bent, called Ardnave, a large flock of barnacle geese used to feed. I made a most successful stalk among the sand-hills, and got no less than nine with a right and left shot from a twelve bore gun, the heaviest shot I ever made with a shoulder gun. But barnacles are the worst eating, as brent geese are the best, of all the species I have tried, and I never again fired a shot at them.
The Cornish chough was a very common bird at that time on the north side of Islay. It is the most graceful in its flight, and most pleasant in its cry, of all the crow tribe. It seems very strange that this bird, which in England is confined to a few localities on our southern and western coasts, should be so common in some of the high mountain regions of Europe and Asia, and that the Himalayan chough, which occurs at 12,000 to 15,000 feet above sea level, should differ so slightly from our native bird, though its environment is so different. Another bird that I found there was the ​raven, the earliest breeder of all British birds, and now rare or extinct in most parts of England. I discovered a nest on the sea cliffs at Laggan Head and took the eggs on February 28th, 1866, being let down by a rope from the top of the cliff, which was my first essay at cliff climbing. If the rope is sound and one is careful to displace all loose stones as one goes down, it is much less dangerous than climbing the grassy slopes of cliffs without a rope, however easy they may seem to be.
At this time, Mr. Robert Gray, of Glasgow, was about to publish a work on the Birds of the West of Scotland, and to it I contributed notes on the Birds of Islay. I gave the Gaelic names by which they are known on the island; I got them from a man named A. Maclachlan, who accompanied me two years later on a more extensive tour in the Hebrides, where as a boatman, interpreter and cliff-climber he was of much assistance.
In Islay on this visit I stalked some wild swans, the only ones I ever had a shot at in Scotland. But golden plover were then as always my favourite bird on the table, and give good sport if you know how to call them on a misty day. St. John's Wild Sports of the Highlands has left very little to say about this sort of sport and remains to this day the best book on the subject.
In 1866 and 1867 I paid two visits to a place then rented by my cousin, A. Hamond, and Lord Bristol, called Shieldaig of Gairloch, on the west coast of Inverness-shire, Here I shot my first stag in October, 1866, on a great flat moss in Torridon after a very long crawl on my stomach with only one boulder between me and the stag for the last 400 yards; it was a poor beast as regards head.
There were many eagles in the district at that time, and a very nice variety of game, though grouse were never plentiful. I met Mr. Osgood Mackenzie of Gairloch, who has published a very charming book on the West Highlands, on which his intimate knowledge of the language, the people, the sport, and the Natural History gives him an unusual authority. On April 20th, 1867,1 had a delightful day with him on Loch Maree, which I think the most beautiful loch in the Highlands on account of its size, surroundings, and the ancient forest on its shore and islands. On this day I found a nest of the Greylag goose, and, on the largest of the islands, Eilan Suidh, the deserted eyrie of an osprey from which Mr. Mackenzie had taken five eggs in former years, though it had not been used since 1861. At that time, however, they still bred on Loch Monar, on a loch in Strathspey, where I afterwards saw and photographed the nest (Trees of Great Britain, plate 165), and on Loch Ericht. In 1908 I saw the last survivor of the ospreys in Scotland, at its former breeding place on Loch Arkaig near Achnacarry. I have five eggs taken by the late Ronaleyn Gordon Cumming, which were undoubtedly taken by him at one of these places.
On the same day I found a short-eared owl's nest with three eggs, and saw the black-throated diver whose eggs I took on an islet in this loch in 1871.
In 1866 I had an interesting visit to the New Forest with Mr. F.D. Godman in search of honey buzzards' nests. At that time several pairs bred regularly in the Forest and their eggs were usually taken by a man named Peckham, to whom I was recommended by Mr. Cumberbatch, ​the superintendent of the Forest. On June 3rd we went with him to a wood called Salisbury Trench, where he knew of a nest which his boy was watching till we came. A little way off the boy appeared and said the bird had just left the nest, which was about fifty feet up an oak tree. I went up and found a large nest lined with fresh green sprigs of beech with two eggs. Though it had been raining, the nest and eggs were dry, and I let them down in my handkerchief and packed them up. When we came to blow them that evening, though their size and shape were all right, the colour and strong smell of turpentine made us suspicious of foul play; but as Peckham knew of another nest we agreed to say nothing at present. The next day, after a very pleasant walk to the north end of the Forest, we came to another nest in an oak tree very difficult to climb. I went up, looking out as I went for signs of anyone having been before me, and whilst I was going up a honey buzzard which Godman saw very plainly flew round and lit on a tree close by. In this nest I found one egg which resembled the others in colour and smell. When I got down, I said to Peckham that the smell was very unusual. "Oh," said he, "did you not know that it comes from the pine shoots which the birds eat?" In the evening, however, we met a man who knew the trick, and who told us that the genuine eggs were probably taken for a collector at Fordingbridge, and that Peckham had a bantam which laid round eggs of the same size and shape as the buzzard's and that he coloured them by dipping them in a solution of ruddle, and fixing the colour with turpentine so that it would not come off. He did not profit by his fraud on this occasion, for when I told Mr. Cumberbatch of it he made the man give up a pair of the real eggs which I have now.
In 1867 I went to a grouse moor in Aberdeenshire which my father and Sir M. Hicks-Beach, who had married my sister, rented, but it was a bad year for grouse, and I never took another Scotch shooting until 1918, as it has always seemed to me that the attractions of big game shooting in wilder countries were much greater than those of Scotland. But I have had some very pleasant times in later years, especially in the forest of Glenavon, which Godman rented for a long period, and where I always enjoyed excellent sport. It seems to me, however, that deer stalking as now carried on is not really, as far as the sport goes, comparable with elk hunting in Norway, with chamois or red deer in the Austrian Alps, or in the highlands of Asia, of all of which I shall have to speak later. The Scotch stalker is no doubt the best in the world on his own ground, and will bring you up to deer which no stranger could approach, owing to his accurate knowledge of the ground and the wind currents. But unless he knows you well and is a more genial companion than some stalkers I have been out with, he is inclined to resent a man using his own judgment. There are so many stags now in most Highland forests, and so few really worth the trouble to get, that I would rather have a week in a really good Styrian forest during the height of the rutting season than a whole season in the best forest in Scotland.
With Maclachlan as my boatman, I made a long tour in the Hebrides in the summer of 1868. My battalion was quartered at the Tower, a station where there was then no duty but guards, and it was possible to get leave. ​I had a light canoe—decked fore and aft, and propelled by a double paddle —built on purpose at Greenock, and I took a fifty fathom rope to enable me to go down cliffs. I was joined during the first part of my trip by my friend the late T. E. Buckley, and we began work in the Isle of Skye in April. At that time the white-tailed eagle was so common in Skye that our host, Mr. Cameron of Glenbrittle on the west coast, told me that sixty had been killed in two years by himself and his shepherds, on account of the number of lambs they destroyed. We were able in two days to take no less than three nests, on a very small part of the coast. One of these was only fifteen to twenty feet from the top of the cliff at Rudha-nanclach and I was easily lowered into its nest. The other was a very difficult one to approach, either from below or above, and would have been impossible to take if I had not brought such a long rope. When we got to the top of the cliff (a very hard climb) the men refused to let me go down, as they said they would not be able to pull me up again, so we lowered Sandy Maclachlan, who was about four stone lighter than I, and who was a skilful and plucky climber. Now, I believe, the white-tailed eagle is quite extinct in the Hebrides, and the only ones breeding in Britain are a pair or two which may survive in the Shetland Islands, where they have been carefully protected for many years past.
From Skye I went to Stornoway and thence to Eishken, the forest lodge of Park, then rented by Mr. Godman. There, in a very easy place, I got a golden eagle's nest with two beautiful eggs, but we were entirely defeated in an attempt on a sea eagle's nest in the Shiant Isles. This was so far from the top and the cliff overhung so much, that Maclachlan, whom we let down, became giddy from the twisting of the rope and could not swing himself into the nest. I was more fortunate with a peregrine's nest at Loch Bhrollum in the Park of Lewis, from which two cock birds had been shot the same season by the keepers. I was able to shoot the hen from the top of the cliff as she flew off the nest, and have her now stuffed, with four beautiful eggs.
Bird lovers of the present day will probably say, "What a brute!" But in those days peregrines were almost as abundant as grouse in the islands, and if I had not shot her the keeper would have done so. I also got a snowy owl which had not yet returned from its winter quarters to the fells of Norway. But I never fired a shot at either of these noble birds again.
The gales which blow in these islands made it at times very difficult to get about, and I well remember having to crawl over a ridge where the wind was so high that I could not stand against it—and this in the month of May. After leaving Eishken I went to Lord Dunmore's shooting lodge at Amhuinnsuidhe in North Harris and stayed with his forester, Finlay Macleod. Here I found another golden eagle's nest in a cliff called Craig na Uishabreadh in Glen Meavag on April 30th, The nest could be approached from below within five yards, but it was impossible to get nearer to it without a rope; so the next day we came again, and sent two men to the top of the cliff who let the rope down to me. I tied it round me and got into the nest, where I found three beautiful eggs, which, though much incubated, I succeeded in preserving; they are one of the most valued ​clutches in my collection. As I was coming down, a great piece of turf came away, and I fell with a jerk which would have pulled down the men above if they had not been firmly anchored in their seat.
My last eagle's nest was got on May 11th at a place called Geo More na Tarkal in South Harris. The old bird was sitting so hard that wc could see her from the top of the cliff only about ten yards down, and when Sandy was lowered he nearly touched her before she went off. There were three large white eggs, which, notwithstanding the lateness of the season, had not been incubated for more than ten or twelve days. After this we crossed over the Sound of Harris to North Uist, where I was entertained hospitably by Mr. Macdonald of Newton on the west coast, from whose house one could see by the light of the setting sun the high cliff of the island of St. Kilda, fifty miles away.
Haskeir is a small rock about twelve miles west of North Uist; and on it I found a large colony of Sterna arctica breeding, though at a considerable distance from their feeding-grounds. One of the smaller rocks near it is the resort of all the cormorants for many miles, which are probably attracted by the solitude of the place. I found that many of their nests contained fresh eggs in July, though no one had landed there for some months; and as there were many young ones nearly fledged, I presume they occasionally rear two broods. Haskeir is the principal resort of the great seals (Halichœrus griseus), which breed there in October and November, and were formerly killed with clubs every year, as they lay on the rock with their young ones. This wholesale slaughter, to which the men of Uist looked forward with great eagerness, had now (1868) been stopped by the proprietor of that island, Sir John Orde, as the seals were in danger of being totally exterminated. I noticed here that none of the nests of the Sterna arctica contained more than, two eggs, which was also the case in other places I visited, while Sterna fluviatilis, which is also common in the Hebrides, usually lays three eggs.
In Berneray (or Barra Head, as it is generally called, to distinguish it from the numerous other islands of the same name) I had the good fortune to stay for four days in the height of the breeding season. I had a narrow escape from drowning in reaching this remote spot, which, so far as I know, no other ornithologist had then visited, At Castlebay, in Barra, I found a man who carried the mails and supplies for the lighthouse, when the weather allowed, and agreed with him for a passage in a boat which, I learnt too late, had only just been purchased by him from one of the East Coast fishermen who came every summer for the herring fishing. She was of the old type of open boat, with a big lug-sail, which had probably been sold as no longer seaworthy, and the purchaser with true Hebridean carelessness took her out on his trial trip without examining her tackle. When we got out of Castlebay into one of the sounds where the heavy. Atlantic swell meets wind and tide, there was a very short chopping sea, high enough to take the wind out of the sail when the boat was down in the trough of the waves. We tried to take the sail down to reef it, but the sheave in the mast, on which the halyard worked, jammed, and we had to cut the halyard. During the confusion the master lost his head, and let the boat get half-full of water by bad steering. Luckily we had on board ​an Excise man who was used to boats, and who was able to take the helm. We had six heavy oars and men enough to man them, as some natives of Berneray were on board. I took one of the stroke oars and my servant, Maclachlan, who was a capable boatman and spoke Gaelic, took one of the bow oars, and whilst we rowed the remaining two men bailed. But they were in such a panic and rowed so badly that, if my man had not threatened them in Gaelic and enforced his threats by knocking one of them senseless into the bottom of the boat, where he was nearly drowned before we had time to notice him, I firmly believe they would have stopped rowing and the boat would have been swamped. As it was, after four hours of the hardest labour I ever endured, we succeeded in getting safe to land on the beach of Berneray, where the lighthouse keeper, who came down to meet us, was waiting. It blew so hard that I had to stay four days at the lighthouse, and the lighthouse keeper was so uneasy about the threats which the islanders had made in his presence to have revenge for the way we had treated them in the boat, that he would not let me or Sandy go out of his sight on the island. Two years afterwards I saw in the Inverness Courier a notice headed "Loss of a boat with all hands in the Hebrides," and on reading it I found that it was the very same boat making the very same passage.
The cliffs which form the south coast of the island culminate in a point at the south-west, on the extreme edge of which is built the lighthouse, at an elevation of nearly 700 feet. On both sides of the lighthouse is a deep chasm, reaching down to the sea; and the whole of these rocks, for more than a mile, are as thickly crowded with sea-birds as they can well be.
It was the grandest sight I ever saw to look out of the window of the lighthouse on a very stormy day and see oneself hanging, as it were, over the ocean, surrounded on three sides by a fearful chasm, in which the air was so thickly crowded with birds as to produce the appearance of a heavy snowstorm; whilst the cries of these myriads, mingled with the roar of the ocean and the howling of the tremendous gusts of wind coming up from below as if forced through a blast-pipe, made it almost impossible to hear a person speak.
The most abundant species were the Puffin, Razorbill, Guillemot, and Kittiwake, which I have named in the order in which they tenanted the rocks; the puffins making their burrows from the top to about halfway down, whilst the guillemots and kittiwakes crowded on ledges almost within reach of the spray. There are only three families on Berneray besides the lighthouse keepers; and though they do not look on birds with the same interest as the St. Kildans do, yet they kill a great number as food for themselves and the crews of the boats which come from Islay to fish for cod and ling.
Their favourite method of fowling is quite different from that pursued anywhere else, and is highly successful, as I have known a man get 600 sea-birds in six or eight hours. On a very windy day he climbs about halfway down the cliff, and seats himself firmly on a projecting point of rock, armed with a pole resting, end downwards, across the thigh. As the birds fly backwards and forwards they are driven by the wind within a few feet of his seat, and are knocked off their balance by an upward ​blow of the pole. When this is properly done the neck is broken, and the birds fall, with the force of the wind, almost into the fowler's lap; but they often recover themselves and fly away. Razorbills and puffins form the great proportion of the bag; but there are also a few guillemots killed in this way, though they do not come so close as the others, and the kittiwakes keep far below. I sat several times with a man who was killing birds in this way, and counted, as well as possible, the number of ringed guillemots which passed by. I found that they were in the proportion of about one to ten or twelve, which agrees with the observations of others on Handa Island and Ailsa Craig, I took several eggs, on which I actually saw a ringed bird sitting, and found they vary as much as the others, though more were marked with streaks than with blotches. I found considerable difference in the size of the puffins here, one of the largest of which had a beak so big that at first it made me almost doubt whether Fratercula glacialis could be a good species, more especially when I found it was fully as large as a specimen from Grimsey Island, near Iceland, kindly lent me by Mr. Tristram. All my doubts, however, were dispelled when I saw two specimens brought back from Spitzbergen by a brother-officer, which were at least a fourth larger than either of the others.
One day I crossed over the Sound of Mingulay, where a landing is by no means easy, owing to the tremendous sea which rises in the narrow channel separating the two islands. To give some idea of the height to which the waves rise in winter, I may say that a green sea lately came right over an island in the Sound, which looked as if it must be nearly 100 feet high, washing away all the sheep on it, though they had hitherto been considered perfectly safe. On the west side of Mingulay the cliffs are even more stupendous than at Barra Head, rising in one place to over 800 feet, and are so smooth and perpendicular that even the kittiwakes could hardly find a resting-place. The same birds are found here as in Berneray, with the addition of the stormy and fork-tailed petrels (Procellaria pelagica and P. leachi), a few of which breed in holes and cracks in the dry peat on the top of the cliffs. I did not find any eggs, but have no doubt that they do breed, as the natives distinguish the latter species by its forked tail, calling it "Gobhlangoidhe," which expresses that peculiarity in Gaelic, and is used for the swallow in some parts of the Highlands. We found the names of birds here, as at St. Kilda, very different from those used in other islands, and, on returning to the village of Mingulay, took them down from an old man who had in his day been one of the best fowlers in the island. The razorbill is called "Dubheanach," the guillemot Langaidh," the old kittiwake "Crahoileag," and the young one (which is a favourite dish) is called "Seaigire" the stormy petrel is called "Amhlaig," and the Manx shearwater "Scraib." This bird was formerly very common, and the young ones, which were called "Fachach," were so highly esteemed that a barrel of them formed part of the rent paid by each crofter in Mingulay to the Macneills of Barra. About a hundred years ago, however, the puffins, which before were not numerous, began to increase very much, and drove the shearwaters from the holes which they occupied in the cliffs; and now they have completely supplanted them, so that only a few pairs of shearwaters are left in the ​island of Pabbay, which is next to Mingulay. The shearwater seems to be on the decrease in most of its other breeding-places, though I have never heard any reason assigned for the circumstance. We found a few pairs of black guillemots breeding in the low caves and rocks of Mingulay and Berneray; but the eggs are difficult to get at. So far as I have seen, they are always two in number, and are placed in deep cracks and holes, but never in high cliffs, like those of the allied species.
It is not the distance which makes St. Kilda so difficult of access (it is not more than sixty miles from Harris); but the want of a good anchorage, and the never-ceasing swell which beats on its precipitous shore, even, in the calmest weather, form such serious impediments to effecting a landing that, in many seasons, it would be impossible to get there before the middle or end of June.
An intending visitor to St. Kilda must take his choice of two evils: either to go in a small boat, which, on his arrival, can be hauled up on the rocks, though most people would hardly venture three-score miles into the Atlantic in such a craft; or to go in a larger vessel, which can lie in the bay at anchor so long as the wind is light, but would be obliged to put to sea immediately if the weather became bad, as the anchorage is very exposed and dangerous. I had made arrangements for a smack to take me there; but the spring and summer of 1868 were so unusually stormy that I should have failed in the expedition if it had not been for the kindness of Captain Bell, of H.M.S. Harpy, a paddle-steamer, which was going to see how the St. Kildans were faring, since they had been cut off from communication with the other islands for nearly nine months.
About one o’clock a.m. on the 22nd May, the Harpy got under way from the Sound of Taransay and, passing the Islet of Gasgeir, which is fre¬ quented by numbers of the Great Seal, arrived about nine pretty close under the cliffs of Boreray, which is five miles north of St. Kilda itself. As we pitched over the swells which rolled in from the west, long strings of gannets kept constantly passing us on their way to the Minch. They have to travel in this way from fifty to a hundred miles every day to their feeding-ground, as the herrings do not rise near the surface of the water until they get inside the “Long Island.” Much of the seaweed they use in their nests is also brought in the same manner, as the rocks of Boreray do not afford sufficient for such multitudes of birds as breed there.
The insufficiency of material induces the gannets to plunder each other, and Martin quaintly describes an instance he witnesses: “One of them finding his Neighbour’s Nest without the Fowl, lays hold on the Oppor¬ tunity, and steals from it as much Grass as he could conveniently carry off, taking his flight towards the Ocean; from thence he presently returns, as if he had made a foreign Purchase, but it does not pass for such. For the Owner had discovered the Fact, before the Thief had got out of sight, and too nimble for his Cunning, waits his Return, all armed with Fury, and engages him desperately; this bloody Battle was fought above our Heads, and proved fatal to the Thief, who fell dead so near our Boat, that our Men took him up, and presently dressed and eat him; which they reckoned as an Omen of good success in the Voyage.”*
1 Voyage to St. Kilda, p. 8. ​The gannets do not breed on the island of St. Kilda at all, but only on Boreray and the adjacent rocks, called Stac-an-Annum and Stac-an-Ligh. These are two almost perpendicular stacks of great height, with flattish tops, which are so crowded with gannets that at a distance they look as if covered with snow. The ascent of these rocks would be impossible to anyone but a St. Kildan; and even to him it is a matter of great difficulty, and can only be effected in the calmest weather. Then a boat is rowed as near as they dare go, and the most active man, jumping out with a rope, scrambles up a short distance and makes it fast to an iron hook, which was fixed in the rock by some of the ancient inhabitants, and without which it would now be impossible to ascend. Four or five of the best climbers then help each other up to the top, where they kill as many of the young gannets as are required and throw them into the sea. This generally takes place in September, when the young are very fat, and heavier than the old birds. They are called “Guga” by the natives, whilst the old ones have the same name, “Sulair,” as is used elsewhere, and expresses their extremely sharp sight *
We were unable to land on Boreray owing to the tremendous swell, and were obliged to content ourselves with a view of its immense crags - from below. It is nearly as high as St. Kilda, being 1,073 feet, and is even more precipitous, as there is hardly a level spot on it.
Until we actually entered the Bay of St, Kilda, very few birds, except gannets and gulls, were seen; and I should not have known that the fulmars were there, until I came to the cliffs where they breed, as they move about very little by day, being very nocturnal in their habits, like the other petrels. They are very seldom seen on the coasts of the “Long Island,” except after severe gales, or on dark foggy days, when they wander further away.
Soon after we entered the bay the people began to appear; and some of the men came off to the steamer in a large, clumsy boat, the only one, however, they have in which to go to the adjacent isles. Some years before, Captain Otter, R.N., who was employed for many years in surveying the district, got them a large and well-found boat, hoping thereby to encourage deep-sea fishing, which is totally neglected on account of the bad weather which so often prevails. This boat, unfortunately, in attempting to cross to Harris, was lost on some rocks called the Glorigs of Taransay, and all her crew, including seven or eight of the best men in the island, were drowned. This sad accident, together with the casualties which take place every now and then from the carelessness of the climbers, has very much reduced the able-bodied population of the island; and there are not more than twenty men now who can pursue their occupations on the rocks. The population at present (1868) is about seventy, and is not increasing, as many of the children die of a disease which appears to be almost peculiar to the place, and commonly carries them off beween the fifth and eighth days.
The men were all stout and hardy, well dressed in homespun cloth; and the younger ones were pleasant, merry fellows, and good companions during my stay, though none of them could speak a word of English.
Cf. Ibis, 1866, pp. 13, 14. ​On landing we were met by the minister, Mr. Mackay, who appeared very glad to see anyone, as may well be imagined. Strange to say, he did not seem to take any interest in, or to know much about the birds, though he has been two years among people whose thoughts are more occupied by birds than anything else, and who depend principally on them for their living. I showed a picture of the Great Auk, which Mr. J.H. Gurney, junior, had kindly sent me, to the people, some of the oldest of whom appeared to recognise it, and said that it had not been seen for many years; but they were so excited by the arrival of strangers that it was impossible to get them to say more about it, and though Mr. Mackay promised to take down any stories or information about the bird that he could collect, when they had leisure to think about it, he has not as yet sent me any. I do not think, however, that more than two or three examples are at all likely to have been seen in the last forty years, as Mr. Atkinson, of Newcastle, who went there in 1831, does not say a word about it in his paper,* beyond mentioning the name, and neither John Macgillivray who visited the place in 1840, nor Sir W. Milner, say that any specimens had been recently procured. I believe that Bullock was also there about 1818, and as he had not long before met with the species in Orkney, there is little doubt he would have mentioned it to somebody if he had heard of any having been recently procured at St. Kilda.
I made every enquiry about this bird on the north and west coasts of Lewis, and showed pictures of it to the fishermen; but all agreed that nothing of the sort had ever been seen since they could remember. Indeed the only specimen of which we know for certain that has been seen in the present century is the one that Dr, Fleming had in 1821, which was captured alive by Mr. Maclellan, of Scalpa, somewhere off St. Kilda.
The first thing which strikes one on entering the houses here is the strong smell of fulmar which pervades everything; though much of the filth which formerly filled them is now cleared out, yet they are by no means pleasant to one who is not accustomed to the smell.
Soon after landing, I started off with some of the best cragsmen to the cliffs at the north side of the island, which form the principal breeding- places of the fulmar. On reaching the top of Conacher, which is the highest hill in the island, we came quite suddenly on a precipice which, accoiding to the measurement of Captain Otter, is no less than 1,220 feet high. The whole of this immense face of rock was so crowded with birds, of which fulmars and puffins made up the greater number, that the sea was seen far below as if through a heavy snowstorm; indeed the birds which were flying in front of the cliff almost obscured the view for a little distance. All the ledges near the top were covered with short turf full of holes, in which the fulmars were sitting on their eggs with the head and part of the body exposed outside. In some cases they were quite concealed; but generally the soil was too thin for them to make more than a slight excava¬ tion. Thousands of fulmars were flying backwards and forwards, with a soft owl-like flight; and though the air was full of them, hardly one ever came over the top of the cliffs.
After having admired the scene for some time, I prepared to descend—
1 Transactions of the Natural History Society, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1832. ​an undertaking which, though dangerous from the looseness of the rock, was by no means so difficult as in some places which I had previously attempted. The usual way in which the ropes are managed is this: one is fastened under the arms, and paid out by the man above as the climber descends; and another is held or fastened to a stake above, and thrown over the cliff, so that the man who is descending can use it to take his weight off the other rope. In this way two men can help each other so as to get almost anywhere. The natives, from constant practice, have wonder- ful judgment in selecting the easiest places; and if they were always care- ful, an accident would be of rare occurrence: but the younger men are too fond of casting off the rope and trusting to their own skill; in this way three lives have been lost in the last few years. It also often happens that stones become dislodged and fall on the head of the climber, who may be unable to avoid them; and in this way I had a very narrow escape while descending the cliffs on the south side of the island on another occasion.
On arriving at the first ledge, where the fulmars were, I had no difficulty in collecting the eggs, which were laid in small holes amongst the stones, or in the turf, on a few bits of grass or stems of the sea-pink, which, however, were so slight as hardly to keep the egg from the bare ground. The birds were very tame, and sometimes allowed themselves to be caught with the hand. The eggs were quite fresh; and all that I took on this part of the cliff were distinctly marked with reddish-brown dots and freckles, which did not appear to have been produced by any foreign substance, as the shell was otherwise clean. I cannot account for these marks in any way, as all the eggs from other places were spotless.
After I had collected a few, I came up and got one of the natives to go down to show us his way of catching birds. He took a rod about ten feet long, with a horsehair noose at the end, and slipped this cleverly over the heads of the fulmars, whose necks he then broke and tied them in bunches of five to the end of the rope. I asked him why he killed so many, as I only wanted a few; and he said that if the egg was taken it was best to catch the bird also as she would lay no more that year.
The fulmar, when caught, vomits from its mouth (and not from its nostrils, as is usually stated) nearly a wineglassful of clear yellow oil, with minute green particles floating in it. This oil has a very strong smell, and when kept becomes of a dark red colour, like raspberry vinegar, The St. Kildans collect a large quantity of this oil, by making the birds vomit it into the dried gullets of solan geese, which are hung on strings when full; and a good deal of grease is also obtained by boiling down the young fulmars, which are one mass of fat.
All the fulmars I caught on the nest were females; and I remarked that the eye is not yellow, as is generally stated in books, but black, or dark brown. The stomach is filled with an oily fluid, in which are the horny mandibles of some cuttle-fish, and a greenish substance, which I believe is sorrel, as that plant grows in great abundance on the rocks, and, as the people say, is probably taken by the birds to correct the oiliness of their diet. The feathers of the breast are unusually thick and close; and there was a bare hollow place on the stomach, of the same size and shape as the egg.
​After remaining a time to admire the view, which alone would fully repay one for the journey to St. Kilda, I returned to the village laden with the spoils. The whole island is covered with little stone hovels, which are built partly as a protection for the sheep during the gales, and partly to dry the turf, which is used for burning, as there is no real peat in the island. The sheep are of a peculiar sort, not unlike those which were kept by the crofters in most of the Hebrides before the introduction of the improved breeds, and have very fine wool, which is sometimes of a light- brown dun colour. This sort, however, is not very common; and the wool is in great request, as the rent is paid principally in wool and feathers. The factor of the island, who lives in Skye, comes every year in June, and remains until August or September, taking away with him all the spare produce of the island; and as this is the only regular communication with the rest of the world, the people depend on him for everything which they cannot make themselves. The present proprietor, Mr. Macleod, is a very liberal landlord, and the condition of the islanders has improved immensely during the last thirty years, so that they are now much better housed and fed than most of the Hebrideans.
After visiting a few of the houses, and examining all the objects of interest, I returned to the Harpy to deposit my birds and eggs, and found most of the older men collected on board begging for tobacco, sugar and other things, though they did not seem very anxious to give us anything in exchange.
Some of the man-of-war’s men had been collecting eggs on shore; and this excited the indignation of the older men, who considered it in the light of stealing their property. After we had pacified them with some small presents of tobacco and sugar, I showed them the pictures in my Yarrell, among others pointing out the fork-tailed petrel. This, however, they did not seem to distinguish by any peculiar name from the stormy petrel, which is common enough, and is here called “Assilag,” The petrels are too small to be of any use for food, and are probably not much seen by the natives, especially as they only come out at night; but the pictures of all the other birds which are found here were at once recog¬ nised, and the Gaelic names given. The kittiwake, which is by far the most common of the Laridæ, is called “Ruideag"; the guillemot, “Lam- haidh” (pronounced “Lavie”), and the puffin, “Bougir,” are also in countless numbers, and, as food, are esteemed next to the fulmar and gannet. The name “fulmar,” which is pronounced here as a word of three syllables, “ful-a-mair,” is the only case I know of, besides the ptarmigan and capercaillie, in which our common English name is taken from the Gaelic.
The shearwater (Puffinus anglorum), which is here called “Scrapire,” is by no means plentiful, and only breeds on Soay, where we were unable to land owing to the heavy swell; but as I was anxious to get some of the petrels, we took the ship’s boat and landed on Dun with some of the natives. This island, which forms the southern horn of the harbour, is the principal preserve of the puffins, whose burrows cover the whole island like a rabbit-warren. Immense numbers were sitting everywhere, flying up as we approached and settling again behind us. They had only ​just begun laying; but I procured a few eggs, which, though quite fresh, were covered with dirt. A few eiders were breeding here, though they are not numerous; and the down is never collected as the young gannets afford an abundant supply.
I expected to find the petrels breeding near the top of the cliff; but none were at present visible, and I think it must have been too early in the year for eggs. There is no doubt, however, that the fork-tailed petrel does breed here, as I have seen eggs from St. Kilda, and Sir W. Milner procured the birds, though John Macgillivray, like myself, was disappointed in finding them. After searching for some time, I looked over a cliff and saw, far below me, a broad flat ledge on which hundreds of fulmars were sitting among the stones. I descended with a rope we had brought from the Harpy, as none of those the natives had were long enough. Two of the young men followed me, coming down hand over hand at a tremendous pace, As soon as the fulmars were disturbed from their eggs, the black- backed gulls came swooping down, and carried them off in their beaks, much to the indignation of my companions, who hate the "Farspach,” as they call Larus marinus, with a deadly hatred, and practise all sorts of barbarities on them whenever they catch them, as they are terrible robbers of eggs. The young men seemed determined to have every fulmar and every egg they could get, as they enjoyed the opportunity of harrying the rock, which belonged to someone else, and probably laid the blame of it on me afterwards.
All the cliffs here are divided among the inhabitants equally, and the boundaries are as carefully observed as if they were fields, so that no one can take eggs on the main island except from his own rock, Boreray, Soay, and the Stacks are considered common property, and are harried occasionally by a party despatched in the large boat for that purpose.
As it was now getting dark, and the wind rising fast, I thought it best to lose no time in getting on board again; for though I was very sorry to leave the place without visiting all the islands of the group, yet I did not wish to be left there a month or more, and the weather looked so threaten¬ ing that Captain Bell was very unwilling to remain longer. We had much difficulty in getting into the boat owing to the increasing swell, and after arriving on board ship were obliged to take leave of the people and put to sea without loss of time. Before long it was blowing a gale of wind from the south-east, and the weather continued so bad for five weeks that no boat could possibly have landed, so I was obliged to content myself with what I had already seen, and leave a more thorough examination of the group to some future observer.
On my return to the Outer Hebrides, I spent some weeks exploring in my canoe the countless little lochs and islands on which sea-birds bred, and succeeded in finding many nests, some of which, on account of their rarity, I did not mention for fear of attracting people, not so common then as now, who collected eggs for sale. The most interesting of these birds was the Red-necked Phalarope, one of the most beautiful and confiding of the little birds that swim. A good many pairs then nested, as they still do, under the more or less efficient protection of the pro¬ prietors on North and South Uist and Benbecula. They were so tame ​that one might almost catch them with a butterfly-net, as they flitted about on the edge of the little pools which are found among the sandhills, and their eggs were then so rare in British collections that, on my return, I was able to supply such ardent collectors as the late Canon Tristram of Durham, and Professor A. Newton of Cambridge. In 1914 I saw these charming little birds quite at home in the aviary of Mr. St. Quintin in Yorkshire, who had imported them from Iceland.
I was also able to prove that the geese which were supposed by Professor W. Macgillivray to be the Pink-footed or the Bean goose (which had also been reported by so good an ornithologist as Selby to breed in Sutherland) were really the Greylag goose. Another bird which had been stated by J. Macgillivray to breed, but of which I could find no reliable evidence, was the Goosander; it is now not uncommon in Inverness-shire and Ross-shire, where ii breeds in holes, but always near the rapid mountain streams which it frequents in preference to still water.
My next journey in search of birds was more important and interesting, and on that occasion I had the company of Mr. T.E. Buckley, who helped me to write the List of the Birds of Turkey, which we compiled and which was published in the Ibis for 1870.* In this paper we said very little about the country, but, though the list is now very much enlarged by later discoveries, our account of the birds was the first attempt at such a thing and contained a good many interesting notes, especially on the birds of prey, which were at that time more numerous than in any other country I have visited.
Arriving at Athens at the end of January, 1869, we found the mountains under snow, which was exceptionally heavy that winter. We engaged as dragoman a man named Alexander, who at that time had a good reputation as a travelling servant, and who enabled us to escape a very dangerous and, as they afterwards became, notorious band of robbers. We were warned by the Consul that it was unsafe to go far out of Athens without a guard, and four mounted gendarmes were provided to escort us as far as Chalcis. Our start was arranged for February 2nd, but two hours before daylight on the morning of the 1st, Alexander woke us up, saying that our day of departure was known to the brigands, who had their spies in the town, and that our best chance was to get out of the city before daylight, when the gendarmes would meet us. Everything had been got ready before, and the horses were loaded with unusual speed. When the guards turned up, we noticed that their carbines were tightly strapped to their saddles, which implied that they did not mean to use them or thought there would be no necessity for so doing.
On the next day we passed through a gorge where the brigands might easily have surprised us, and Alexander was very anxious that I should not attempt to use the new breech-loader Henry carbine which I carried, as he said that if we were caught it would only be a question of ransom. As it turned out, the brigands were a day too late, but they attacked and robbed some people who had an escort in this very place, two days later, and we reached Chalcis after a long and tiring ride through Bœotia. Here I got my first taste of the insect pests which were then, as they are now,
1 Pages 59–77, 188–201, 327–341. ​the curse of Eastern inns. We attempted to cross the mountains of Euboea. The snow higher up was so deep that we had to come back to the coast, where we lodged for the night in a veritable pirates' castle, which had no entrance on the ground floor and could only be entered by a ladder. On the stone floor of this keep we found our host, supposed to be an ex¬ pirate, seated on the floor with his retainers round a charcoal fire, and here I smoked my first cigarette, which was then an almost unknown form of smoking in England. We were hospitably entertained with kebabs and pilaf, two excellent Eastern dishes, which I still eat with relish, and, after a long haggle, Alexander announced that he had made a bargain with our host to take us in his galley to Volo, which was then Turkish territory. As it was a feast day they would not start then, but we went down to the shore and slept under a shed ready to start at daybreak. I have never seen a more curious boat, propelled by twelve rowers in what seemed a most laborious way, and very much resembling, I imagine, the galleys of the Venetians on a small scale. She was rowed by six pair of oars double banked, and at each stroke the men had to jump up on to the bench before them and throw themselves back with their weight on the oar into the bottom of the boat.
The dress and features of some of these rowers would have made them well suited to represent Greek pirates in a comic opera. But they stuck to their work like men, with occasional snacks of bread, dried onions and very strong goats' milk cheese, the whole day long, and brought us safely into Volo at night. Here we found the Turkish fleet, under the command of Hobart Pasha, lying at anchor, and I was informed that on account of some grievance between Greece and Turkey which might lead to hostilities, we could not be allowed to land, so we went alongside the flag-ship, and hailed the admiral's ship in English. He told us that the best thing we could do was to go on board a French steamer that happened to be in harbour on her way to Salonica, where we landed the next day.
In this town we found a British Consul who introduced us to the Turkish Governor, who gave us permission and a passport to go into the interior, and, hearing that we were sportsmen, invited us to a battue which he had arranged in the bay. He was very much interested in my Henry breech¬ loader, as such things were then unknown in Turkey, where most of the inhabitants still used flint and steel guns. I have been put to shame by a young Turk using such an antiquated gun, with which he wiped my eyes handsomely at a partridge; but powder was very scarce, and we were only allowed to land a few pounds by the expenditure of much bakshish.
The marine battue was especially directed against an immense flock of wild swans, which had been driven out of their usual quarters by the severe weather, and covered a large expanse of sea in thousands. Everyone in the town who owned a gun seemed to have been invited, and perhaps a hundred boats were formed into line to surround the swans, with the Pasha in a man-of-war galley in the middle. We tried to explain to him that the line should be a semicircle with the outer horns in advance, and that in this way the swans might be compelled to fly over the boats, but etiquette would not allow any boat to go before that of the Pasha, and the line was so ill kept that very few swans were bagged. I was able, by ​firing into the brown of them at 300 yards, to kill one and wing another, and I might have sold my rifle at a fancy price on the spot to the Pasha, but I would not part from it. I was very glad I did not, for the first time I fired it on shore I killed a wild boar, and the second time I bagged the finest red deer stag I ever killed. His head and the clumsy-looking old rifle that killed him are still two of my most valued possessions. Whatever the virtues of the modern small-bore rifles may be, I can testify that a 500-bore Henry with five drams of black powder will kill anything from an elephant downwards, and that fewer beasts have got away wounded from this rifle than from any that I ever possessed.
One of the most curious things that I saw in Salonica, a proof of the mixed population of the district, was the official journal, printed in four different languages with four distinct characters as follows—Greek, Turkish in the Arabic character, Bulgarian in the Russian character, and Spanish printed in the Hebrew character for the benefit of the important colony of Spanish Jews who then as now controlled a great deal of the trade of the place.
As soon as Alexander had got the horses, always a matter which takes time in the East if you are at all particular about your mount, we rode into the country at the mouth of the Vardar river, where its delta forms great marshes, the home of innumerable wildfowl of many species, and spent some days in shooting in this paradise for the wildfowler until ammunition ran low. In the marshy forest on the east of this delta we found the wild pheasant, Phasianus colchicus, which, owing to the density of the thickets, was very difficult to flush, and when put up by dogs sometimes flew into a tree. When the snow had melted from the mountains, we went to a monastery called Kalipetra on the banks of the Bistritza river near Verria, where the forests on the lower hills of the Macedonian Mount Olympus sheltered wild pigs, roe and red deer; and where, higher up, bears and chamois are said to be found. With the help of the native hunters and woodmen we had several more or less successful drives, and I was lucky enough to get a stag which I have only once seen the like of. I was posted close to the top of a pass where the snow still lay at about 3,000 feet. After waiting for some time I heard the hounds, which the Turks use for this sport, open a long way down the glen. At last, out of the mist which was gathering round me, two splendid stags came trotting up, and I shot the leader dead at about sixty yards. I slipped in another cartridge and ran to get a shot at the other, but I tripped and fell on the frozen snow; he was out of sight in the mist before I recovered myself. This stag, though very lean at this season, had a fine head of fourteen points and the four quarters weighed 94 okes, equal to about 250 pounds.
On a cliff near Verria I took my first nest of the black vulture, but though we saw lammergeyer we never found their eyries. The white-tailed eagle, Haliætus albicilla, was as common in the marshy woods on the Karasmak river as I had found it in the previous year in the cliffs of the Hebrides, and breeds on willow and black poplar trees. It is here so plentiful that we found three nests within half a mile of each other, all of which were tenanted, and there were numerous others at a short distance.
​In these dismal woods, which are interspersed with patches of high reeds, with dense brambles and underwood in the dryer places, the water is often up to one's waist. Many sorts of wildfowl literally swarm, and attract a corresponding number of birds of prey. Vultures, eagles, falcons, buzzards, harriers and owls were so numerous that in the evening nearly every tree was tenanted by some great bird which had come from the surrounding swamp to roost. Among these, spotted and white-tailed eagles were most common; and the latter were all breeding in the month of February. Some pairs, indeed, must have commenced nidification as early as Christmas; for a nest was found on February 17th, containing two young ones at least a week old. The nests were usually placed on large willows or poplars, and from these eyries we obtained a view which seldom gladdens the eye of a naturalist. Here and there one could see small parties of cranes stalking about amongst the bog-myrtle bushes, great white herons in snowy grandeur wading solemnly in the reeds, pygmy cormorants sitting on the branches which overhung the water, flocks of little gulls hawking like swallows in the bright sunshine, ducks of a dozen species flying about in every direction, smews and grebes diving in the streams which intersect the marsh, harriers and eagles sailing over the tops of the reeds and striking occasionally at some unwary duck; while waders and warblers of many kinds frequented the outskirts of this ornithological paradise. Indeed the days that we spent at Luko Monastir, a small monastery on the edge of this morass, were among the pleasantest of our tour; and what with pheasant and duck shooting in the mornings, nesting and eagle shooting in the afternoons, and skinning in. the evenings, our time was fully occupied.*
Early in March we went to Constantinople, where I made the acquaint¬ ance of a French banker, M.A. Alleon, who was as fond of birds as he was of good living, and not only helped us to explore the Forest of Belgrade, which was then the breeding place of many rare birds of prey, but enabled us to taste the delicacies of Turkish cookery, which is too little known in Europe. It is a curious fact that even in out-of-the-way parts of the East you often find, among Turks, Greeks, Arabs, Hindus, Malays, and even Tibetans, men who have a natural genius for cookery, which is lacking, as a rule, in our country, and even more so in countries colonised by our countrymen. I have had a better dinner for ninepence in a Bulgarian country town than one could get for ten times the money in England, Scotland or Ireland, where meat dishes seem to be the only idea of good living among the lower and middle classes.
After a few days in Constantinople, we went on to the Crimea, where we visited the battlefields and trenches, then in very much the same state as they were left by our army, and on the battlefield of Alma I saw the ground where my regiment had gained so much distinction.
I remember one thing which may, to some extent, explain the very weak defences of the Russian left on the Alma, whose valley is bordered on that side by earth cliffs, which were easily stormed and taken by the French. As one approached from the direction whence our Army came, these cliffs appeared, owing to some optical illusion which I cannot
Quoted from Ibis, January, 1870. ​explain, so much higher than they really are, that birds which at a distance we thought to be large birds of prey, turned out, when we got close to them, to be only jackdaws, and the cliffs which seemed impregnable were so low that an active man could scramble up almost anywhere. Spring in the Crimea was much more backward than in Turkey, and there was little to interest a naturalist at that season, so we returned by way of Odessa and landed at Kustendji, now the Rumanian port called Constanza, on April 1st, 1869.
Here we found an English medical man, Dr. Cullen , who was very helpful, and we spent a very profitable month in the Dobrudja, on the Danube, and in the country about Shumla and Varna. The ornithological results were very rich, as vultures, falcons, eagles and many other birds were very abundant.
I made the acquaintance here of Mr. H. Barkley, afterwards and until his death one of my best friends. He was one of four brothers who had laid out and built the line from Varna to Rustchuk, and his book, Bulgaria before the War, describes the country, its life and people much better than I could do. He, knowing the Bulgarians more intimately, formed a much higher opinion of their qualities than I did, but we, like most Englishmen, much preferred the Turks, and especially the Tartars, who had colonised the Dobrudja after the Crimean War, and who were always more friendly, hospitable and genial, than the plodding, industrious and avaricious Bulgarian peasants. Though one cannot judge correctly of any people until one knows their language, and though they have shown in recent years that they possess military virtues which were not then supposed to exist, I never liked the Bulgarians, and this dislike was increased by my later journeys in their country.
We had one experience of the rough and ready way in which the Turks then administered justice, which I must relate as it occurred. Whilst staying at Kustendji we had our lodgings in a so-called hotel kept by a Greek, but only slept there for four or five nights, and generally had our meals with Dr. Cullen. When it was time to start home and we had everything packed to go, by the only train in the day, to Tchernavoda on the Danube, where the steamer for Buda-Pest called twice a week, the Greek inn¬ keeper would not bring the bill till the very last moment, and when it came it was so exorbitant that I refused to pay more than half what it came to. He then refused to let our luggage go, and in consequence we missed the train. I at once went to the Vice-Consul; he was away, but his dragoman, who was the official interpreter, accompanied me to the Konak, where the Kaimakam administered justice. We found this official ready and willing to hear the case at once. The innkeeper was summoned and the bill produced. The Kaimakam, who had once been to Paris, was very pleased to air the French that he knew, and went through the bill in detail, with sarcastic remarks on the items. " Does the fellow think he keeps the Grand Hotel? Six beshliks a day for a bedroom with bugs in it! He ought to be proud to entertain English travellers for two. Eggs, wine and pilaf and kebabs, four beshliks! Is there a famine then in Kustendji and I not to know it? Such a meal is dear enough at one beshlik. I will not allow such a scandal to pass unpunished in my town, ​and moreover, the clerk finds the addition is very incorrect. You have offered him too much, sir! Instead of seven liras I shall reduce the amount to five, and one of his own countrymen would not have paid more than three. Moreover, he has laid hands on your luggage without right, for which I fine him one lira.” Much laughter and applause in court. But when I offered the amount awarded to the innkeeper, he was in such a passion that he flung the money on the floor of the court and refused to take it. This made the Kaimakam very angry.
“ What is this ? Pig of a Greek! Do you insult my judgment in this way ? I will teach you better. I fine you three liras and three days' imprisonment as well. If you come here again for such a thing, I will make you cat stick.” More laughter and applause in court, when the prisoner was removed in custody. We thanked the judge and went out in triumph. After some experience of county courts in England, I should say that Turkish justice was not so bad as it is sometimes painted, for in any other country we should have taken as many days as we took hours to get a similar matter decided, and probably a less favourable award.
The next question was how to get to Tchernavoda in time to catch the steamer which left that evening, and as my leave was nearly up I had to catch it somehow. The English manager of the railway said that he would give us a special engine for five pounds, which we agreed to pay. When we got near Tchernavoda something went wrong with the machinery and the English driver got down, and lay on his back under the engine working with a spanner. In order to test his work he ordered the Bulgarian stoker, who was on the cab, to move some lever, but by mistake he moved the starting lever enough to move the engine a foot or two. A little more, and the firebox would have crushed the driver to death. lie quite coolly crawled out, and began to correct the stoker with his fists, but the man broke away, and fled into the country, and we went on without him. There were some curious characters among the drivers and gangers who were brought out from England by the Barkley brothers to work the line at first. Though they had then been some years in the country and had learnt enough Turkish to direct the native navvies, many of whom were very tough customers, they seemed to think it was beneath their dignity to talk to them without a mixture of English words, just as British soldiers talk to the natives of India. But at the same time they were able to hold their own with the roughest of the Albanians, Kurds, Armenians, and Bulgarians who were attracted by regular pay and English honesty to the service of the company, and the Barkleys, who had made and managed the line for some years, always kept up the best relations with the people and had great influence and power in the country.
In the autumn of 1869 I retired from the Scots Guards as I found that there was little or no prospect of any real soldiering, and the extra rank which officers in the Guards then enjoyed made it impossible for me to exchange as a captain into a regiment in India as I tried to do.
* ↑ Both F. Du Cane Godman, President of the British Ornithologists' Union, and Percy Godman, who both received the Gold Medal presented to the four surviving founders on the fiftieth anniversary of the Society, have since died: F.D. Godman in 1919, and P.S. Godman in 1922.
* ↑ Mr. J.G. Millais states (1929) that both these pairs have been destroyed, and the Sea Eagle as a breeding species is extinct in Great Britain.