384 Mr. A. Newton on Mr. J. Wolley's Researches 



or towards the end of the last century this Geirfuglasker was 

 constantly visited by fowling expeditions. Local tradition makes 

 the same assertion, assigning the leadership of these adven- 

 turous exploits to one Svenbjorn Egilsson, born in 1700, and 

 Hannes Erlendsson, born in 1705 ; but later their place was 

 taken by one Hreidar Jonssou, whom people now living can re- 

 member as a blind pauper some eighty years of age, with a long 

 beard. This hero was born, as it appears, in 1719, and used to 

 go yearly to the skerry on behalf of Kort Jonsson, a rich farmer 

 at Kyrkjubol, who flourished between 1710 and 1760. Hreidar 

 is even reported to have made during one summer three expedi- 

 tions, in which he acted as foreman. After his time the 

 practice seems to have died out ; but one witness informed us 

 that, to the best of his recollection, people had made voyages 

 between 1784 and 1800. Faber, who was in Iceland in 1821, 

 and then attempted to reacli the skerry (of which exploit I shall 

 presently speak), tells us [op. cit. p. 48), that for a long period 

 these perilous expeditions had been relinquished — probably be- 

 cause the results from repeated performance fell short of the 

 risk incurred. But the birds were not wholly banished ; for 

 Thorwalder Oddsson, born about 1793, told us, that when he 

 was a boy, some nine or eleven years old, he found one on the 

 shore at Selvogr, and a few years later, probably between 1808 

 and 1810, two were killed at Hellirsknipa, between Skagen and 

 Keblavik. Erhndur Gu^mundsson, an old man with a most 

 retentive memory, showed us the gun with which he shot one of 

 them. He was in a boat with his bi'other- in-law, A'sgrimur 

 Stemonsson, who died in 1847, and the occurrence happened in 

 the month of September. The Gare-fowls were sitting on a 

 rock : A'sgrimur fired first, and killed one ; the other took to the 

 water, and was shot by Erlendur. They each ate their re- 

 spective birds, and very good meat they found them. A third 

 is said to have been shot a few years later, near the same spot, 

 by one Jacob Jonsson, now dead ; this also was eaten. 



The cause, however, of the most wholesale destruction of 

 Great Auks in modern times must be sought elsewhere. In 

 1807 hostilities commenced between England and Denmark. 

 The following year, the * Salamine,' a privateer of twenty-two 



