Birds. 



8117 



Faber, who was in Iceland iu 1821, and then attempted to reach 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 because 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 Sel- 

 vogr, and a few days later, probably between 1808 and 1810, two were 

 killed at Hellirsknipa, between Skagen and Keblavik. Erlendur 

 Gudmundsson, 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 

 brother-in-law, A'sgrimnr Saemonsson, 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 

 respective 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 guns, under British colours, and 

 commanded by one John Gilpin, but probably owned by Baron Hom- 

 pesch, who was also on board, appeared at Thorshavn, the capital of 

 the Faeroes, which her crew almost entirely plundered, ending by 

 carrying off a certain Peter Hansen, whom they forced to pilot them 

 to Iceland. Arrived at Reykjavik, July 24th, 1808, they repeated their 

 outrages, and before they finally quitted the island paid a visit to the 

 Geirfuglasker, where they remained a whole day, killing many birds 

 and treading down their eggs and young. After this they sailed away, 

 August 8th, and deposited Hansen again in the Faeroes. On February 

 7th, 1810, at the solicitation of Sir Joseph Banks, an order in council 

 was set forth by the British Government, exempting the northern pos- 

 sessions of the Danish Crown from any molestation on the part of 

 English cruisers, and permitting the inhabitants of the same to trade 

 with either London or Leith, though not with the mother country. 

 The Court of Copenhagen met this act of common humanity by issuing 

 decrees, strictly prohibiting, on pain of death, all intercourse with the 

 British.* The consequence was that the unfortunate Fseroese were 



* 'Journal of a Tour in Iceland in the Summer of 1809/ By William Jackson 

 Hooker, F.L.S., &c, 2nd ed., London, 1813, vol. ii. pp. 57 et seq. 



