rst sights the little island of St. Paul, situated in the waste of
waters between Cape Ray, the southwestern point of Newfoundland on the
north, and Cape North, the northeastern projection of Cape Breton Island
on the south. Across this entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence from cape
to cape is a distance of fifty-four nautical miles; and about twelve
miles east-northeast from Cape North the island of St. Paul, with its
three hills and two light-towers, rises from the sea with deep waters on
every side.

This wide inlet into the gulf may be called the middle portal, for at
the northern end of Newfoundland, between the great island and the coast
of Labrador, another entrance exists, which is known as the Straits of
Belle Isle, and is sometimes called "the shorter passage from England."
Still to the south of the middle entrance is another and a very narrow
one, known as the Gut of Canso, which separates the island of Cape
Breton from Nova Scotia. Through this contracted thoroughfare the tides
run with great force.

One hundred years ago, as the seaman approached the dangerous entrance
of St. Paul, now brightened at night by its light-towers, his heart was
cheered by the sight of immense flocks of a peculiar sea-fowl, now
extinct. When he saw upon the water the Great Auk (_Alca impennis_),
which he ignorantly called "a pengwin," he knew that land was near at
hand, for while he met other species far out upon the broad Atlantic,
the Great Auk, his "pengwin," kept near the coast. Not only was this now
extinct bird his indicator of proximity to the land, but so strange were
its habits, and so innocent was its nature, that it permitted itself to
be captured by boat-loads; and thus were the ships re-victualled at
little cost or trouble. Without any market-value a century ago, the
Great Auk now, as a stuffed skin, represents a value of fifteen hundred
dollars in gold. There are but seventy-two specimens of this bird in
the museums of Europe and America, besides a few skeletons, and
sixty-five of its eggs. It was called in ancient days Gare-fowl, and was
the _Geirfugl_ of the Icelander.

Captain Whitbourne, who wrote in the reign of James the First, quaintly
said: "These Pengwins are as bigge as Geese, and flye not, for they have
but a little short wing, and they multiply so infinitely upon a certain
flat island that men drive them from thence upon a board into their
boats by hundreds at a time, as if God had made the innocency o