A remarkable method of catching gulls, derived from the Indians, was
practised in Wellfleet in 1794. “The Gull House,” it is said, “is built
with crotchets, fixed in the ground on the beach,” poles being
stretched across for the top, and the sides made close with stakes and
seaweed. “The poles on the top are covered with lean whale. The man
being placed within, is not discovered by the fowls, and while they are
contending for and eating the flesh, he draws them in, one by one,
between the poles, until he has collected forty or fifty.” Hence,
perchance, a man is said to be _gulled_, when he is _taken in_. We read
that one “sort of gulls is called by the Dutch _mallemucke, i.e._ the
foolish fly, because they fall upon a whale as eagerly as a fly, and,
indeed, all gulls are foolishly bold and easy to be shot. The
Norwegians call this bird _havhest_, sea-horse (and the English
translator says, it is probably what we call boobies). If they have
eaten too much, they throw it up, and eat it again till they are tired.
It is this habit in the gulls of parting with their property
[disgorging the contents of their stomachs to the skuas], which has
given rise to the terms gull, guller, and gulling, among men.” We also
read that they used to kill small birds which roosted on the beach at
night, by making a fire with hog’s lard in a frying-pan. The Indians
probably used pine torches; the birds flocked to the light, and were
knocked down with a stick. We noticed holes dug near the edge of the
bank, where gunners conceal themselves to shoot the large gulls which
coast up and down a-fishing, for these are considered good to eat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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