To his sailors--always hungry and partly fed on salted provisions, as seamen were down to a few years ago--this inexhaustible supply of fresh food was a source of great enjoyment.

They were indifferent, no doubt, to the fishy flavour of the auks and the guillemots, and only noticed that they were splendidly fat.

Moreover, the birds attracted Polar bears "as large as cows and as white as swans".

The bears would swim off from the shore to the islands (unless they could reach them by crossing the ice), and the sailors occasionally killed the bears and ate their flesh, which they compared in excellence and taste to veal.
[Footnote 1: Funk Island--called by Cartier "the Island of Birds"-- is only about 3 miles round, and 46 feet above the sea level.

It is 3 miles distant from the coast.] [Footnote 2: The Great Auk (_Alca impennis_), extinct since about 1844 in Europe and 1870 in Labrador, once had in ancient times a geographical range from Massachusetts and Newfoundland to Iceland, Ireland, Scotland, N.E.England, and Denmark.