The Great Auk. j 35 



south of Ireland. On Funk Island, off the coast of Newfoundland, vast quantities 

 of remains of the Great Auk have been found. Bones have also been found in 

 shell mounds on the coast of Maine and Massachusetts. 



The accounts of the destruction of the Garefowl, or Penguin (by which name 

 this bird was formerly widely known), furnish us with some idea of the former 

 numerical strength of this species. From a letter written to Hakluyt, in 1578, it 

 appears that the fishermen, who visited the banks of Newfoundland, depended 

 greatly upon these birds as a source of food, or as the writer puts it, " victuall 

 themselves always with these birdes." The Auks were salted down. In 1785, 

 Cartwright, writing about the Funk Island, said that people brought the birds 

 thence salted, and ate them in lieu of salted pork. He further stated that " the 

 poor inhabitants of Fogo Island make voyages there to load with birds and eggs. 

 Where the water is smooth they make their shallop fast to the shore, lay their 

 gang-boards from the gunwale of the boat to the rocks, and then drive as many 

 Penguins on board as she will hold, for the wings of these birds being remarkably 

 short they cannot fly. But it has been customary of late years for several crews 

 of men to live all summer on that island, for the sole purpose of killing birds 

 for the sake of their feathers : the destruction they have made is incredible. If 

 a stop is not soon put to that practice, the whole breed will be diminished to 

 almost nothing, particularly the Penguin, for this is now the only island they 

 have left to breed upon." 



The most famous haunts of the Garefowl in Europe were the skerries to the 

 south-west of Cape Reykjanes, on the mainland of Iceland. Here the birds made 

 their last stand. On one of these skerries, known (in common with two or three 

 other rocks) as the Geirfuglasker (now submerged), situated about twenty-five 

 miles from the mainland, great numbers of Garefowls were killed, in the 

 last century, by expeditions which visited the rock to obtain eggs and birds. 

 In 181 3, the Governor of the Faeroes sent the schooner Faroe to Iceland to 

 get food. The crew visited the Geirfuglasker and killed many birds. When they 

 reached Reykjavik they had twenty-four Garefowls on board, besides numbers 

 that had been salted down. In 1830 this Geirfuglasker disappeared after a volcanic 

 disturbance. Soon after this a colony of Garefowls appeared at Eldrey, a stack 

 nearer the mainland and more accessible. Here they were harried for fourteen 

 years, and it is believed about sixty birds were killed during that time. In 1844, 

 the last pair were killed through the efforts of a special expedition, and these two 

 birds are generally believed to have been the last of their race. 



Not much was ever written about the habits of the Garefowl. Martin, who 

 visited St. Kilda at the end of May, 1697, wrote: — "The sea-fowl are first the 



