133 
Notice regarding the Island of Grimsey. 
set out from Oefiord toward the end of May 1820, in a small 
six-oared fishing-boat, the crew of which were in quest of Hak- 
alls (Squalus Carcharias). When about three leagues from 
the island, they saw numerous flocks of birds swimming around 
the boat. They landed on the 28th of May, at which time the 
island was still covered with a thick bed of snow, which only be- 
gan to melt in the beginning of June. There were on this me- 
lancholy rock eight miserable earthen huts, the inhabitants of 
which, to the number of fifty, subsist chiefly by fishing. They 
are extremely poor, and are even exposed to all the horrors oi 
famine when the winter is unusually prolonged, and the float- 
ing ice from Greenland keeps them blocked up, so as to deprive 
them of the resources which the fishery presents them. In the 
time of Olavius, (from 1770 to 1780), they had 3 cows, 80 
sheep, and a horse, which being 30 years old, he observes, was 
regarded by them as a sort of antiquity. When Mr Faber vi- 
sited the island, he found their stock reduced to a few sheep. 
A principal part of the food of these poor people is derived 
from the birds which cover the cliffs of the island. These are 
of the usual species which frequent the polar seas ; Uria Troile , 
Uria Alle , Ale a Torda , Procellaria glacialis , several species of 
Carbo and Larus , and, above all, an incredible multitude of 
* Larus tridactylus. Mr Faber observes of the Uria Alle , that 
this pretty little bird, so abundant in the northern seas, secures 
its eggs, by depositing them in the crevices of rocks, and among 
the fragments which have fallen from the cliffs ; in this respect 
resembling the Uria Grylle, so common on many parts of our 
own coasts, while the other species of the genus deposite their 
solitary egg upon an exposed shelf of the rock, without any 
nest. 
Bird-catching was an art in which the inhabitants were very 
expert. They had procured thongs of hides, which they used for 
ropes in descending the precipices. It may here be observed, 
that the preference given by the rock-men of our own islands to 
ropes, composed of twisted thongs or of hair, over those made of 
hemp, arises from the latter being more liable to cut. The 
danger accompanying this pursuit may readily be imagin- 
ed, and the person who went down, had for himself a double 
share of the plunder. During Mr Faber’s stay on the island, a 
