ted albatross, sooty tern,
gray-backed tern, noddy tern, Hawaiian tern, white tern, Bonin petrel,
two shearwaters, the red-tailed tropic bird, two boobies and the
man-of-war bird.

Laysan Island is two miles long by one and one-half miles broad, and at
times it has been literally covered with birds. Its bird life was first
brought prominently to notice in 1891, by Henry Palmer, the agent of
Hon. Walter Rothschild, and in 1902 and 1903 Walter K. Fisher and W.A.
Bryan made further observations.

Ever since 1891 the bird life on Laysan has been regarded as one of the
wonders of the bird world. One of the photographs taken prior to 1909
shows a vast plain, apparently a square mile in area, covered and
crowded with Laysan albatrosses. They stand there on the level sand,
serene, bulky and immaculate. Thousands of birds appear in one view--a
very remarkable sight.

Naturally man, the ever-greedy, began to cast about for ways by which to
convert some product of that feathered host into money. At first guano
and eggs were collected. A tramway was laid down and small box-cars were
introduced, in which the collected material was piled and pushed down to
the packing place.

For several years this went on, and the birds themselves were not
molested. At last, however, a tentacle of the feather-trade octopus
reached out to Laysan. In an evil moment in the spring of 1909, a
predatory individual of Honolulu and elsewhere, named Max Schlemmer,
decided that the wings of those albatross, gulls and terns should be
torn off and sent to Japan, whence they would undoubtedly be shipped to
Paris, the special market for the wings of sea-birds slaughtered in the
North Pacific.

[Illustration: LAYSAN ALBATROSSES, BEFORE THE GREAT SLAUGHTER
By the Courtesy of Hon. Walter Rothschild.]

[Illustration: LAYSAN ALBATROSS ROOKERY, AFTER THE GREAT SLAUGHTER
The Same Ground as Shown in the Preceding Picture, Photographed in 1911
by Prof. Homer R. Dill]

Schlemmer the Slaughterer bought a cheap vessel, hired twenty-three
phlegmatic and cold-blooded Japanese laborers, and organized a raid on
Laysan. With the utmost secrecy he sailed from Honolulu, landed his
bird-killers upon the sea-bird wonderland, and turned them loose upon
the birds.

For several months they slaughtered diligently and without mercy.
Apparently it was the ambition of Schlemmer to kill every bird on the
island.

By the time the bird-butchers had accumulated between three and fo