A ROCK IN THE BRITISH ATLANTIC.*
ISLAND life, if the island be not too big, is always interesting, whether that of men, animals, or plants. Islanders make the most of what Nature offers, because otherwise their life would often be intolerable, if in the colder climates, and become "specialists," just as island- plants and islands become specialised in reference to their surroundings. Of the island communities round our own coasts none is quite so remarkable as the most distant of all on the rock of St. Kilda. It is not a " stack " itself, but a rounded mountain, with stack rocks and islets round it. The main island rises 1.220 ft., with its head in the clouds • With Netter, and a Camara. By R.. Kearton, F.Z S. Illustrated by 180 Pictures from PLotographs by Cherry Eearton. London: Cassell and Co. f21s.] and its feet in the breakers. Here is the human settlement. On one of the subsidiary islets, Boreray, is gathered the main colony of the sea-birds ; and on a third, Soa, are the diminutive descendants of Viking sheep, left by the old sea-rovers of the North, just as the buccaneers of the South Seas left tortoises and turtles on the coral islands, where they were handy as a reserve of food for pirate crews. And on this nest of ocean rocks, thirty miles west of the westernmost strand of Ultima Thule, are some seventy-five men, women, and children who live, and live well, under stranger conditions than any other community of non- migratory Britons, from whom they are distinguished even by Act of Parliament ; for every Wild Birds' Protection Act, or Bill for the protection of sea-birds, specially and with due intent exempts from its range of pains and penalties the petrel and puffin eating islanders of St. Kilda.
The most recent chroniclers, and certainly the best illus- trators of the story of the island, are the brothers Messrs. R. and C. Kearton. The earlier portion of their latest book, entitled With Nature and a Camera, deals entirely with life on St. Kilda, as they saw and photographed the separate societies of men and sea-fowl during a summer stay on the rock. The men of St. Kilda are a superior race to the crofters of the Hebrides and mainland : well-to-do, well-clad, and well-fed. Mr. Kearton accompanied the factor of the MacLeod on his annual visit carrying commodities for sale to the St. Kildans, and incidentally learnt some instructive facts as to the scale of living among these dwellers on the rock. The chief im- ports were meal and flour, of which each family consumes on an average 120 lb. per head per annum, or 28 per cent, more than satisfies the ordinary crofter of the Hebrides. The population of the island are both respectable and self- respecting. Not a soul appeared when the steamer arrived off the one landing-place until the whistle had blown more than once. It was not etiquette to rush down like a parcel of savages, even though the islanders are cut off from the world for nine months in the year. They retire to " tidy " them- selves, and then row out and call in proper form. Mr. Kearton and his brother evidently made a favourable impression on these independent people. They were made daily companions of the islanders in their pursuits of fowling and fishing. The St. Kildans exhibited their wonderful skill in rock-climbing and snaring birds. Their visitors were apt pupils, and made an adequate return by exhibiting their wonderful photographs of the precipices and sea-fowl. In this little community the ordinary and extraordinary occupations of life seem inverted. Sport is a serious work ; shepherding and shearing are an exciting sport. A St. Kildan qualifies for marriage by proving his courage and skill as a fowler by standing on a dizzy precipice called the Lovers' Stone, and goes out bird-snaring with a serious face. When he wants a sheep for the butcher he asks his friends to a sheep-hunt on the island of Soa, in which dogs and men pursue the animals from rock to rock. "The factor told me," writes Mr. Kearton, " that he had volunteered to supply the people with nets, that they might catch the sheep with more humanity and less waste of life. But his offer was declined. They preferred the old methods, which supplied plenty of danger and excite- ment." While the sheep are hunted, the cows—one is sur- prised to hear of cows on St. Kilda—are thoroughly spoilt. Every day the women are seen bard at work picking dock. leavesand storing them in baskets. This is because all the St. Kilda cows refuse to be milked unless they are fed with dock-leaves all the time ! One is curious to know what would happen if these cows were allowed to go out on strike! Would they be uncomfortable, or revenge themselves by going dry ? The sheep on Soa islet are diminutive brown creatures, which are plucked instead of being sheared at the time when the wool would naturally be shed, and what wool will not come off in this way is severed with a pocket-knife! About one thousand sheep, and from twenty-five to thirty head of cattle, is the estimate given of the St. Kildans' flocks and herds. Against this very modest pastoral contribution to the food-supply, that derived from what would elsewhere be considered "sport" is astonishing. The St. Kildans are almost the only representatives left in our islands of man in the hunting age. They are stated to have once caught nearly ninety thousand puffins in one season. This estimate does not correspond with that of the Rev. H. A. Macpherson in his account of the snaring of the fulmar petrels in the History of Fowling. Mr. John Mackenzie, factor of St. Kilda, ascertained for him the precise number of fulmars and other fowl consumed on St. Kilda every year. At present the total catch is divided into sixteen shares, each of which contains the following birds : 80 young gannets, 120 adult gannets, 560 fulmars, 600 puffins, 120 common guillemots, and 50 razor- bills, making 1,530 birds for each share. This gives a grand total of 24,480 head of sea-fowl consumed annually. One wonders whether the people like this form of food. Apparently, by long habit they do. Like the Arctic and Sub-Arctic peoples, they like the train-oil taste, and actually prefer the rock-fowl to the good and abundant coal-fish, because the latter has "no substance "—i.e., no oil—in it. They prefer to eat the oily livers of the fish, and give the rest to their fish-eating dogs. The puffins are made into kippers by being split and cured. Mr. Kearton notes that the people of the Faroe Islands think the fulmar disgusting food, and cannot even en- dure the smell of the eggs. Mr. C. Kearton gives some striking and exquisitely clear photographs of the fulmar petrels on their nests, of the cragsmen snaring them with long fishing-rod snares, and of other fowlers seated on the grass slopes, above the crests of the sheer precipices, "angling" for puffins. These comic birds show a mixture of sharpness and stupidity under these oircumetances. They allow the fowler to seat himself within a rod's length of them, and angrily pick up the snare in their beaks, and toss it aside. Usually they are caught at the next attempt, but this does not frighten off the other puffins. The fulmar, though the most valuable of the St. Kilda birds, does not play quite the indispensable part attributed to it. It is doubted, for example, whether its oily. body was ever used as a lamp with a wick drawn through and coming out at the mouth. Fulmar oil was, and is, used as. lamp-oil ; but the ancient lamps were made of stone, and. some which remain are exactly like those used in the Stone Age. The island is full of survivals, material and social, of primitive, if not prehistoric, life. Among these are, or were recently, a community of goods, there having been at one time in the whole island only three of the costly horse- hair ropes used for descending parts of the cliff, and these owned in common. Boats are still, we gather, common property, and the greater part of the catch of fowl is " pooled" for several use. The stone lamp, underground dwellings for temporary use on the island of Boreray, small cattle like the breed whose bones are found beside those of the boa eurus, and a dietary derived in as large proportions from the minor products of the shore as that of the shell-fishing feeding tribes, the relics of whose feasts are still visible on our coasts, are closely parallel with surviving evidences of what we are accustomed to regard as the intolerable life of primitive man. The analogy holds good in some curious details. The islands are dotted over with small circular buildings of stone, roofed with turf, called " cleits." They are used to store fodder in; but it is estimated that there are five thousand of these "cleits" on the islands, buildings so primitive and so unaccountable, were not their use explained, that their purpose, if the popula- tion passed away, would probably be one of the puzzles of pos- terity. Yet these modern analogies with the evidences of primeval man are due solely to limitations of soil and climate. They have imposed few or no disabilities on the people, who, so far from exhibiting any of the semi-savage character usually credited to prehistoric man, enjoy a high degree of comfort and education superior to that of the crofters on the mainland, who retain none of these survivals. The impression left by reading Mr. Kearton's book, and comparing this with the relation of Martin's visit in 1697, suggests more than a suspicion that "prehistoric man" in England and elsewhere may have had a much larger share of civilisation than that with which he is commonly credited.
The remaining portion of Mr. Kearton's volume is devoted to records of general observations of outdoor life, made mainly during excursions for the purpose of photographing birds on their nests. These notes contain little that is new, and some inaccuracies. A pointer-dog, for instance, , described as a setter. But the illustrations are triumphs of photography, one showing the raindrops on a blackbird's back as she sat with her wings spread to protect her brood in a shower. Some of these pictures, however, are a blot on the book, showing live animals and birds, stoats, kestrels, and a, buzzard caught in steel-traps.
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