When they are done laying, and when the young can fly, the birds leave the island, usually going off together.  During the summer and fall they return in clouds at intervals, but stay only a few days at a time, though there are generally a few to be found at all times; and I am told that eggs in small quantities can be found in the fall.

The murre does not fly high, nor is it a very active bird, or apparently of long flight.  But the eggers say that when it leaves the island they do not know whither it goes, and they assert that it is not abundant on the neighboring coast.  The young begin to fly when they are two weeks old, and the parents usually take them immediately into the water.

The sea-parrot has a crest, and somewhat resembles a cockatoo.  Its numbers on the South Farallon are not great.  It makes a nest in a hole in the rocks, and bites if it is disturbed.  The island was first used as a sealing station; but this was not remunerative, there being but very few fur seal, and no sea-otters.  This animal, which abounds in Alaska, and is found occasionally on the southern coast of California, frequents the masses of kelp which line the shore; but there is no kelp about the Farallones.

In the early times of California, when provisions were high-priced, the egg-gatherers sometimes got great gains.  Once, in 1853, a boat absent but three days brought in one thousand dozen, and sold the whole cargo at a dollar a dozen; and in one season thirty thousand dozen were gathered, and brought an average of but little less than this price.

[Illustration:  THE GREAT ROOKERY.]

Of course there was an egg war.  The prize was too great not to be struggled for; and the rage of the conflicting claimants grew to such a pitch that guns were used and lives were threatened, and at last the Government of the United States had to interfere to keep the peace.  But with lower prices the strife ceased; the present company bought out, I believe, all adverse claims, and for the last fifteen or sixteen years peace has reigned in this part of the county of San Francisco—­for these lonely islets are a part of the same county with the metropolis of the Pacific.

[Illustration:  INDIAN GIRLS AND CANOE, PUGET SOUND.]

CHAPTER XIII.

THE COLUMBIA RIVER AND PUGET SOUND—­HINTS TO TOURISTS.

In less than forty-eight hours after you leave San Francisco you find yourself crossing the bar which lies at the mouth of the Columbia River, and laughing, perhaps, over the oft-told local tale of how a captain, new to this region, lying off and on with his vessel, and impatiently signaling for a pilot, was temporarily comforted by a passenger, an old Californian, who “wondered why Jim over there couldn’t take her safe over the bar.”

“Do you think he knows the soundings well enough?” asked the anxious skipper; and was answered,