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294 The feathers were plucked and dried, being used for beds, and other purposes. In warm weather the organ of scent is rather disturbed, as I have experienced, when one rests upon a bed of ill-prepared mutton-bird feathers. It would take about five-and-twenty birds to produce a pound of feathers, which used to sell for sixpence.

The sealers' women had an ingenious mode of catching the birds to procure their feathers. They selected the very early morning, when the birds that had stayed on the island by night were not yet stirring. Having previously got a large pit made, with a brush fence on one side, they would rouse the birds from their slumbers, and drive them, like a flock of sheep, toward the hole; as, with their long wings, the creatures could not take flight without a fall first, so as to expand their pinions. On coming to the edge of the pit, the birds would readily find their wings, but would strike against the obstructing fence, fall downward, and be rapidly covered by the advancing throng. At their leisure, the gins would then descend, seize, and pluck their prize.

A narrative is given by a person voyaging to Sydney in 1816, which illustrates the perils of the craft. In the Straits a boat was overtaken containing a sealing party, evidently in distress. The captain lowered a boat, and heard what they had to say. They had stayed so long on one of the islands as to be out of provisions. In making their way to port, the weather was tempestuous and their progress slow. Exhausted by hunger, having nothing but seal-skins to devour, they were quite unable even to trim the sail to the changing wind. Supplying their immediate necessities, the English skipper would willingly have taken them in tow; but being only a day's run from the harbour, they declined the offer. The ship stayed six months at Sydney, but nothing was ever heard of the struggling crew, who were supposed to have perished in the gale.

A sealer left on a reef between Gape Grim and King's Island to collect skins was not called for in time; impelled by want he constructed a boat of seal-skins, and managed to get to the island. Another, anxious to get to a cave in a rock, and unprovided with a boat, fastened some skins together, and floated over with the tide. He succeeded in killing a number of fat cubs, when a huge mother seal returned. Raging at a cry of her