Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/405

Rh gneiss, along which the eggs were deposited. The eggs of Brunnich's Guillemot show quite as much variation in colour as those of Alca troile, and are quite as beautiful. To get back into the boat, rising and falling with the heavy swell, and to preserve the eggs from destruction, was a more difficult feat than landing. Holding the red silk handkerchief which contained the plunder, firmly between my teeth, I jumped blindly into the arms of the sailors, who caught me as they would a bale of goods. As good luck would have it not one of the eggs was cracked. We dropped anchor in the harbour of Upernivik the same day. This settlement, situated iu lat. 72° 48' N., is placed upon a small island : the inhabitants number under a hundred souls. The governor and missionary live in comfortable wooden houses ; and there is a small, but neat, church. The huts of the natives are inferior to those at Godhavn, and so is the general appearance of the natives. Upernivik is certainly a most dreary looking spot : facing the open sea it is directly exposed to its winds and fogs; in winter the sun is below the horizon for seventy-nine days; and yet we found the Danish governor and his amiable wife seemingly cheery and contented with their lot. Some of the Dundee whalers had called at Upernivik a month before our arrival, so that Governor Fliescher and his wife were not very far behind us in European news. On landing I walked to the top of the island, which was nearly bare of snow, and some four hundred feet in height; the surface of the rock on its extreme summit showed ice-scratchings ; the entire island is strewed with erratic blocks. I observed a pair of Ægialitis hiaticula, and several Snow Buntings. The flora appeared very scanty in comparison with Disco, but Ranunculus pygmæus grew abundantly in swampy spots near the settlement, and the diminutive Betula nana reaches the top of the island. The natives stretch the seal-skins in front of their "igloos," and fasten them clown by means of a great number of bone pegs, chiefly snapped off" pieces of seal's ribs ; then the women set to work with the scrapers, now made of iron and imported from Denmark, and remove the adherent blubber from the skin. The bone pegs are similar to those I have found in the coast-middens of the west of Scotland; and I have no doubt they had been used for the same purpose. 1 was much struck with the intelligence of two young children that followed us : when they saw that we were interested in insects and plants they led us to the most likely spots, and drew our attention to some freshwater Crustacea ; for every