Mr. Shepherd, on arriving at the farm-house, was received in the most hospitable manner, hospitality being one of the special virtues of the Icelander. He was much impressed by the appearance of the house, which seemed to be converted into one large duckery. The earthen wall surrounding it, and the window-embrasures, were filled with ducks; on the ground, encircling the house, was a ring of ducks; on the sloping roof were seated ducks; and a duck was perched on the door-scraper!
A grassy bank close by had been cut into square patches like a chess-board (a square of turf of about eighteen inches being removed, and a hollow excavated), and all these squares were occupied by ducks. A windmill was infested with them, and so were all the out houses, mounds, rocks, and crevices. In fact, the ducks were everywhere. Many of them were so tame as to allow the stranger to stroke them on their nests; and their mistress said there was scarcely a duck on the island which would not allow her to take its eggs without flight or fear. When she first became possessor of the island, the produce of down from the ducks did not exceed fifteen pounds weight in the year, but under her careful nurture it had risen, in twenty years, to nearly one hundred pounds annually. About a pound and a half are required to make a coverlet for a single bed; and the down is worth from twelve to fifteen shillings per pound. Most of the eggs are taken and pickled for winter consumption, one or two only being left to hatch.
Eider-ducks congregate in numerous flocks, generally in deep water; they dive with wonderful force, and thus are enabled to capture the shell-fish which form their principal food. If a storm threatens, they retire to the rocky shores where they love to breed and rest. The Greenlanders kill them with darts, pursuing them in their little boats, watching their course by the air-bubbles that come floating upward when they dive, and dexterously aiming at them as soon as they rise to the surface wearied. Their flesh is eaten by the Greenlanders, but it is not well-flavoured; their eggs, however, are held in high esteem.
The king eider (Somateria spectabilis) belongs to the same genus as the former.
We suppose that every reader is acquainted with the beautiful lines in which Tennyson has embodied the fable of the dying swan singing its own dirge:—
“With an inner voice the river ran,
Adown it floated a dying swan,
And loudly did lament....
The wild swan’s death-hymn took the soul
Of that waste place with joy