8118 



Birds. 



nearly reduced to a slate of starvation, and in 1813, as a last resource, 

 their Governor, Major Lobner, determined to send a vessel to Iceland 

 to obtain some necessaries. This vessel, the schooner " Faeroe," of 

 twelve guns, he placed in charge of Hansen, as one already acquainted 

 with the coast. When they came off Cape Reykjanes they were 

 becalmed, and a boat being lowered, a party went off to one of the 

 skerries, on which, as their captain expected, they found abundance 

 of birds, and among them many great auks. They killed all they 

 could, and loading the boat quite full, yet left many dead ones on the 

 rock, intending to return for them ; but the wind springing up, Hansen 

 made sail for Reykjavik, where, about a week later, they arrived on 

 the 29th of July, having then on board among their victims no less 

 than twenty-four gare-fowls, besides others which were already salted 

 down. One of these birds is said to have been given to the Bishop 

 (Vidalin), and by him sent to a friend in England. Mr. Wolley con- 

 versed with one of the two survivors of this voyage, Daniel Joensen, 

 in 1849,* and on July 25th, 1858, through the kind attention of Herr 

 Sysselmand H. Miiller, we had an interview with the other, a clear- 

 headed old man, Paul Medjord by name. The accounts of these two 

 witnesses differ from each other in no material point, but it does not 

 seem quite certain whether the rock on which they landed was the 

 Geiifugladrangr or the Geirfuglasker proper. Many of the above 

 particulars, including the exact dates, which I believe have never 

 before been published, were most obligingly furnished us from the 

 official records by Herr Dahlerup, the Governor of the Faeroes, and 

 Herr V. Finsen, the By-fogden of Reykjavik ; but Faber, in 1822, 

 briefly mentioned this massacre, and in 1839 the late Etatsraad Rein- 

 hardtf added some further information, which notices have been copied 

 into various other works. 



In 1814, according to Faber (loc. cit), seven great auks were killed 

 on a little skerry at Latrabjarg, on the north shore of Breidifjordr. I 

 do not know any other reported instance of its occurrence there or 

 elsewhere in Iceland so far to the north. Olafsen (op. cit. p. 562) 

 gives a lengthened description of the locality and the birds which fre- 

 quent it, but makes no mention of Alca impennis. The only notice of 

 the place I can find besides is in Mr. Metcalfe's amusing little book 



* 1 Contributions to Ornithology,' 1850, [edited] by Sir William Jardine, Bart, &c. 

 Edinburgh, 1850, p. 1 16. 



| Kroyer's ' Naturhistorisk Tidsskrift,' i. p. 533. 



