glacialis), whose strong flesh is his food, its bones his fuel, and its feathers his bedding. Nay, more! the young birds have a wick run down their throats, and they are so charged with oil that they serve as lamps. The fulmar petrel has to be caught with caution. The fowler must drop on it suddenly, and by a sharp grasp of the throat secure it before the bird has time to spit the oil from its beak, which it will do, when alarmed, knowing it to be the treasure for which it is hunted. As the feathers can never be purified, the offensiveness of the fowler's home may be guessed; to a stranger, the atmosphere is perfectly unendurable. One or two cottages in Reykjavík are furnished with feather-beds of fulmar down, and none but natives will enter the hovels. Children do not live, unless removed to the mainland; the coarse flesh of the sea-birds, and the early age at which they are weaned, produce a fearful disease amongst them, called gjuklofi, which is quite incurable. Violent cramps and spasms contort the body and continue at intervals, increasing in violence, till death ensues. The history of this cluster of islands is marked by misfortune, as may be gathered from the Icelandic annals. Shipwreck succeeds shipwreck; half the crew of a merchant vessel rise in the night and murder the other half, as the ship lies at anchor in the tiny harbour; the crags become a refuge for outlaws. "Lopt in the islands biting puffin bones, Soemund on the moor munching berries," says an old saw, commemorating two famous exiles. Finally, pirates enter the harbour, rob, burn, and carry into captivity, as has already been mentioned in the introduction. A boat started from among the rocks as we came to a standstill just off the harbour, and brought letters from the post ship; the sysselman, the doctor and the parson were in the bows, and eight lusty fishermen rowed. The post-bag was handed up the side, and one letter, the only one that year, was flung to them from the deck. "Some newspapers!" in an imploring voice from the little cockle-shell which danced at our side, and we tossed down all t could scrape together in the cabin. loose, we waved caps, and shouted captain opened the bag, he found dozen letters, of which only two h is just the way of these out-of-thr "They write to any one they kno years, and always forget the i break the seals and discover th We steamed on again. shoulder of Eyjafjalla, 5,4? and, as we steam past the threads the scenes of th catch the white cap of of Trihyrníngr, and the around him. As evening set i low about Eyrarbak There was a cry o' deck to have a sending up spou' There must ha from his Whit the ungainly The Ya "I calcul U-nited S "M derisio on h fishi г r |