198 
A VOYAGE TO SPITZBEBGEN. 
quest of, and we give way with a will, only halting for 
a time to kill a seal and a few dovekies ( mergulus ),. 
which offer too tempting opportunities to neglect them. 
We land upon the crater-like formation which rises 
hardly above the water, and the shingly shore has but 
one break in its circumference, opening to the west¬ 
ward, not, as it is figured on the chart, to the north¬ 
ward. The vast sheet of water enclosed is covered 
with ice, which seems to have remained there all the 
year. Numbers of eider ducks, usually sociable in their 
habits, were found here, but wild and difficult to kill. 
The drakes, especially shy, could have had little ex¬ 
perience of the tender solicitude bestowed upon their 
kind by the good folk of Iceland; or in migrating 
north, it is possible that they laid aside their company 
manners, and with the change in their habitat had 
assumed a wdlder nature and a greater fear of human 
beings. C. W. Shepherd, in his admirable account of 
the birds of Iceland, mentions a visit to an island 
but three quarters of a mile in width, where he found 
“ on the coast, a wall built of large stones put above 
the high water-level, about three feet in height and of 
considerable thickness. At the bottom, on both sides 
of it, alternate stones had been left out, so as to form a 
series of square compartments for the ducks to make 
their nests in. Almost every compartment was occu- 
