Page:Journal of a Voyage to Greenland, in the Year 1821.djvu/214

162 the name of Dung Bird, from an erroneous notion, that both pursue the kittywakes, to obtain the excrement of the fugitive: but I observed them to harass the latter, until from fatigue, or fear, the kittywake was compelled to disgorge the contents of its stomach, which the pursuer caught with astonishing dexterity before they reached the water, and then the kittywake was no longer molested. The Larus Crepidatus has much white about its head and neck, breast and belly; its two central tail feathers are a little longer than the rest, and are black, tipped with white, as are the tips of the wings.

A perplexing fog with floes of ice having surrounded us, during the last two days we could make very little progress, and were kept in perpetual anxiety and watchful apprehension or the ship's safety; and during the long haziness we lost our companion. This day at noon, the fog began to disperse, and the floes, we were enabled to observe, had not only diminished in number but in size. The ice, indeed, altogether now wore a very different appearance from that which it had hitherto presented: it had lost its beautiful snowy whiteness, as well as the character and forms which it had formerly assumed, with an ever-changing variety, that afforded unceasing gratification, and tended to render a voyage to Greenland much more interesting than to any other part of the world. The chaste snow, which gave so agreeable a covering to the ice, was now no more to be seen; a dirty forbidding surface became its substitute, and