f so
poor a creature to become such an admerable instrument for the
sustenation of man."

In a copy of the English Pilot, "fourth book," published in 1761, which
I presented to the library of the United States Coast Survey, is found
this early description of this now extinct American bird: "They never go
beyond the bank [Newfoundland] as others do, for they are always on it,
or in it, several of them together, sometimes more but never less than
two together. They are large fowls, about the size of a goose, a
coal-black head and back, with a white belly and a milk-white spot
under one of their eyes, which nature has ordered to be under their
right eye."

Thus has the greed of the sailor and pot-hunter swept from the face
of the earth an old pilot--a trusty aid to navigation. Now the
light-house, the fog-gun, and the improved chart have taken the place
of the extinct auk as aids to navigation, and the sailor of to-day sees
the bright flashes of St. Paul's lights when nearly twenty miles at sea.
Having passed the little isle, the ship enters the great Gulf of St.
Lawrence, and passes the Magdalen Islands, shaping its course as wind
and weather permit towards the dreaded, rocky coast of Anticosti. From
the entrance of the gulf to the island of Anticosti the course to be
followed is northwesterly about one hundred and thirty-five nautical
miles. The island which divides an upper arm of the gulf into two wide
channels is one hundred and twenty-three miles long, and from ten to
thirty miles wide. Across the entrance of this great arm, or estuary,
from the high cape of Gaspe on the southern shore of the mainland to
Anticosti in the narrowest place, is a distance of about forty miles,
and is called the South Channel. From the north side of the island and
near its west end to the coast of Labrador the North Channel is fifteen
miles wide. The passage from St. Paul to Anticosti is at times
dangerous. Here is an area of strong currents, tempestuous winds, and
dense fogs. When the wind is fair for an upward run, it is _the_ wind
which usually brings misty weather. Then, from the icy regions of the
Arctic circle, from the Land of Desolation, come floating through the
Straits of Belle Isle the dangerous bergs and ice-fields. Early in the
spring these ice rafts are covered with colonies of seals which resort
to them for the purpose of giving birth to their young. On these icy
cradles, rocked by the restless waves, tens of thousands of