379 
in Iceland respecting the Gave-fowl. 
bat he was prevented by the unfavourable state of the weather 
from landing. On his return next month to Reykjavik, he in¬ 
formed us that there were no traditions in that part of the country 
of the bird ever having been there. Respecting the second 
Geirfuglasker I have mentioned, that which forms one of the 
Yestmannaeyjar, we heard on all sides that it was yearly visited 
by people from the neighbouring islands, and, though we were 
told that some fifteen years before a young bird had been ob¬ 
tained thence*, it was quite certain that no Great Auks resorted 
thither now. 
Of the third locality I have now to speak. Lying off* Cape 
Reykjanes, the south-western point of Iceland, is a small chain 
of volcanic islets, commonly known as the Fuglasker, between 
which and the shore, notwithstanding that the water is deep, 
there runs a Rost (Roost), nearly always violent, and under 
certain conditions of wind and tide such as no boat can live in. 
That which is nearest the land, being about thirteen English 
miles distant, is called by Icelanders Eldey (Fire Island), and by 
the Danish sailors Meel-ssekken (the Meal-sack), a name, indeed, 
well applied; for, seen from one direction at least, its appearance 
is grotesquely like that of a monstrous half-filled bag of flour, 
the resemblance, too, being heightened by its prevailing whitish 
colour. Not very far from Eldey lies a small low rock, over 
which it seems that the sea sometimes breaks. This is known 
as Eldeyjardrangr (Eldey J s Attendant). Some ten or fifteen 
miles further out are the remains of the rock formerly known to 
Icelanders as the Geirfuglasker proper, and to Danes as Lade- 
gaarden (the Barn-building), in former times the most consider¬ 
able of the chain, but which, after a series of submarine dis- 
* Of course it does not follow, even if the story be true, that this bird 
was bred there. Faber states (Prodromus der islandischen Ornithologie, 
Kopenhagen, 1822, p. 49), that he was on the Westman Islands in July 
and August 1821, and that a peasant there told him it was twenty years 
since a Great Auk (and that the only one of the species he had ever seen) 
had occurred there. He adds, that this bird and its egg, upon which it 
was taken, remained a long time in a warehouse on one of the islands, but 
had vanished before his arrival. We may, with Professor Steenstrup 
(l. c. p. 76, note), infer from this that the Gare-fowl, even about the year 
1800, was a great rarity in the neighbourhood. 
2 e2 
