Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/51

 SLIPPERY grass slope, broken here and there by outcrops of grey rock, rising steeply from the actual wave-washed cliffs to over 500 feet above the sea; a few cushions of pink thrift, a little sheep-bitten gorse, short and thickly matted, and ferns or bracken in the shelter of the rocky cracks; below, the racing water, near two miles of leaping waves, deep eddies, and smooth swirls of oily water, which even on the calmest day gives evidence of the power of great tides rushing through the narrow passage between the island and the point of furthest Lleyn. Such is the home of the Manx shearwater on Ynys Enlli, the Island of the Currents, better known as Bardsey Island, or to the natives as "the Bardsey." Ray named the shearwater "the puffin of the Isle of Man," but it is doubtful if the bird now nests on the Calf; indeed it has been questioned whether it ever did. Other stations appear to have been deserted, but there are still considerable colonies on many little frequented islands round our shores, and on Bardsey a fair number of shearwaters rear their young.

"Beyond Lhyn," says Giraldus, "there is a small island inhabited by very religious monks, called Cælibes, or Colidei. This island, either from the wholesomeness of its climate, owing to its vicinity to Ireland, or rather from some miracle obtained by the merits of the saints, has this wonderful peculiarity, that the oldest people die first, because diseases are uncommon, and scarcely any die except from extreme old age. Its name is Enhli in the Welsh, and Berdesey in the Saxon language; and