THE HOME OF THE GREAT AUK. 461 



each burrow is ornamented by a little heap of slowly whitening- 

 bones. 



To onr party these little osteological collections were a goodly 

 sight, settling at once the question of finding remains of the great 

 auk, and indicating by their presence the existence of other bones 

 yet to be brought to light. Fortunately, the anatomy of the great 

 auk is peculiar, so that there could be no doubt but what the bones 

 here and there strewed on the surface were the bones we had come 

 so far to seek. 



There is not the slightest possibility of any bone of the razor- 

 bill or murre being mistaken for that of their huge relative the 

 great auk ; and, in fact, of all the bones exhumed, there was little 

 more than a handful belonging to any bird save this giant among 

 auks. 



Crowning the summit of the island are the ruins of a stone 

 hut, years ago the winter quarters of a sealing-party, placed here 

 to await the coming of the seals on the drifting ice of early spring. 

 The experiment resulted fatally, for all save the cook were 

 drowned while hunting, and he, the sole survivor, was almost in- 

 sane when rescued. 



Not far from here, an old chest, peeping from beneath a x>il© 

 of stone, marks the grave of another sealer, a young man from 

 Green Bay, who, carried out into the fog by drifting ice, perished 

 miserably near this forlorn spot. 



Near by are the almost obliterated walls of two small struct- 

 ures, overgrown with weeds, which in default of any tradition 

 may be surmised to be the dwellings of the old-time destroyers of 

 the auk. 



The stones of which these huts were built, as well as those form- 

 ing the inclosures in which the auks were confined to await their 

 slaughter, were quarried by Nature from the granite rock of the 

 island. Time and frost split this into blocks of varying size and 

 thickness, and, just where the great auks were most abundant, 

 just there the slabs of stone lay thickest, as if Nature wished to 

 aid man in his work of destruction. 



There are no bowlders of foreign origin on this jjart of the 

 island, nor did we see any along the sloping northwestern shore, 

 although Prof. Milne found some there at the time of his visit in 

 1874. Many of the inclosures just alluded to (" compounds" they 

 were termed) have disappeared, but others are still distinctly out- 

 lined, although most of the stone slabs composing them now lie 

 prostrate. The two best-preserved pens, located some little dis- 

 tance from the southwestern lauding, are about twelve feet square, 

 and not one block of stone is missing. 



Close by these compounds we upturned the sod over a circle 

 ten feet in diameter, beneath which the soil was composed of 



