dous effect on the form of the land. It is impossible to tell where ice underlies the piles of rubbish, and where is dry moraine, till the whole comes down to the water's edge, and is there exposed in section. Here the two materials are strangely intermingled. The ice is banded with lines of sand, in one place swelling in lenticular masses, in another dying out, and everywhere highly contorted, looking for all the world like a cliff of gneiss. When the glacial period closes, what strange patterns will be formed by the residual sands; what a puzzle to those who have not seen them in the making! An interesting island to the geologist, but fearfully depressing as a spectacle. Round the gloomy lake stand as it were vast pithead banks, varied by patches of dirty snow, all black-and-white except where some reddish spikes stand out like ruined engine-houses built of cheap brick. You cannot see the clean snows of the heights, you cannot see blue sky; a canopy of cloud presses down. You cannot look out on sunlight and colour, the breach in the prison walls is too narrow. It is the abomination of ugliness.

Such are all recently volcanic districts; but the whole of the Dependency is not so new, for it comprises Graham Land and all that part of Antarctica as far as the South Pole. In this direction we continued, followed out of harbour by the customary snowstorm. But as

we approached the limit of the cloud-cap that grows like a mushroom out of Deception, an amazing vision leaped into the broadening belt of blue sky that lay along the horizon, a pile of frozen clouds, borrowing all his delicate tints from the lately-risen sun. On the charts it is given a position and the name of Smith Island, but I do not believe it to be real ; it is like nothing earthly. Every fine day-and all days were fine-while we were in these waters that wonderful apparition hung in the sky over us; and it was the last, as well as the first, sight we had of things very much better than the South Shetlands.

For we were going to pass through Belgica Straits, between Graham Land and the Palmer Archipelago, and there is nothing in the world more beautiful than the mountains that border that passage. Here at sea-level in the Antarctic one gets atmospheric effects unknown at the greater heights from which one sees the Alps (I maintain that in Switzerland one should be blindfolded till one is nine thousand feet up); and I shall always think the latter crude in colour and harsh in line after the soft shades of the Solvay Range and the golden light of Graham Land.

And there was ice, floating in, reflected in, the glassy water; ahead and to starboard dazzling white on a pool of bright blue; to port and astern pale green against a sea of cream; some bergs square,

some round, and some arched and pinnacled fantastically.

But I preferred the mountains. These were not the old familiar friends; they also were new to me. Down the steep slopes, through mazes of crevasses, over stupendous falls the ice kept its purity unsullied by mud or moraine; and where it broke into the sea in cliffs three hundred feet high, it did not show a speck from top to bottom-a contrast to the dirty snouts of Alpine glaciers. Again, it was new to see nine thousand feet of rock and snow rising from the level of the straits, in which at times the floes became so numerous that one had almost the illusion of a huge glacier filling a flat valley, unlike the tilted slopes which merge gradually into a face, becoming only more steeply tilted.

A little farther on came another type of scenery, this a more thoroughly Antarctic type. The high mountains retreated behind flattened domes of nevé; the only rocks seen were such as, rising from the water, were too sharp to support the crumbling and top-heavy snow-cap that covered all the more substantial land. As we progressed the rocks became more numerous; we were among a group of small islands where, tucked into impossible creeks between impending ice-cliffs (but in this cold climate they do not fall as often as one would think), were steamers of eight or ten thousand tons, cutting in and boiling down whales as comfort

ably and serenely as if they were in Blacksod Bay.

But in our farthest port of call there was trouble. Breeze Harbour looks like a threat of trouble; and only one man is crazy enough to take a big ship into it. The trouble was that a very much bigger iceberg had come in after her and threatened to carry away her moorings and push her into a cul-de-sac where she might be stuck for the winter. One of her catchers was steaming up against it to try and push it out of the way; but as it was a thousand times her weight, the effects were not conspicuous.

I had arranged for an excursion up the glacier here, but that confounded iceberg disappointed me. At any moment it might change its front and attack us instead of the factory ship, so we were under short notice for steam. Meanwhile the captain of that vessel took me for a trip round the coast in his launch. I would have given up as many mountain ascents for those three hours; mountains I may climb again, but never shall I have such an intimate acquaintance with icebergs. We sported round them, we darted across them in a swirl of pale green water between their shining pinnacles; we squeezed between rocks red, grey, and yellow, and ice-cliffs white and blue. We squeezed, I think, rather imprudently near the latter. One berg, a huge tricuspid affair, had, as is their manner, its towers set upon its very edge, and sadly

undermined by the sea; but one underestimates the toughness of southern ice.

This fairyland, for so it was, I did not see at night, when its inhabitants adopt their proper form; by day I believe they change themselves into penguins. I had seen penguins before, but did not know their origin.

I came back to port to find two more catchers reinforcing the push-party at the iceberg, and with some help from the tide actually moving it clear of the parent ship. These catchers are most efficient little vessels, fast, handy, perfectly equipped, and of necessity kept in firstclass order, for a chipped propeller, a loose rudder-head, or a slack bearing would give the alarm as they steal on their quarry. They are small enough to turn and twist in the chase, yet large enough to keep the sea in any weather. It is hard to understand how a steamboat some 110 feet long and of 130 tons can get within twenty yards of a whale, for that is about as far as one can trust the harpoon gun, but a whale sighted is generally a whale killed. I do not know how it is done, though I have seen the performance. This is how it appears to the spectator.

We raise a spout, perhaps a mile away. The whale usually blows two or three times in quick succession before going down again for ten minutes or so, thus one can judge in what direction she is travelling. The gunner, the captain of the

catcher, steadies the helm, and then strolls off the bridge towards the gun platform. On the fore-deck he passes the look-out man, who has just come down from the crow's nest, and borrows a fill of tobacco from him. The latter goes to the wheel, if there is no one already there. Meanwhile spectators emerge from various parts of the ship.

When all these adjustments have been made, the whale blows again, right ahead, and a hundred yards away. The helm is shifted a little, and the engines rung slow, the gunner looks for a convenient lee to light his pipe in, then mounts the platform and casts loose the gun. Nobody runs about or shouts, the few orders are given in an undertone.

It seems an age of waiting till we see a vague greyness in the blue sea ahead of us. The helmsman gives a little sheer to bring the target well out on the bow and expose her broadside; then the waters are parted and a flat head emerges ; the great nostrils follow, throwing a jet of vapour into the air, and sink again. An interminable length of curved back rolls by, the gunner keeps his sights on the waterline, and not till half the whale has passed does he fire. And that is the end of her!

Of course, it is not always so easy. In bad weather the gun platform must be a very unhealthy spot, nor could one trace the whale's movements so well in broken water. Some

In the head of the harpoon is a bursting charge fired by a time-fuse, and a close shot, well directed, will scatter scrapiron all through the whale's vitals and kill her instantaneously. Our forlorn hope got home, but only crippled her, and she set off on the surface with our ship in tow.

Then we saw the wonderful gear that makes steam whaling possible. Between the harpoon and the winch the line is played by a tremendous battery of coiled springs fitted in the hold. Their effective extension is some thirty feet, through which the strain increases to fifteen tons, the limit of safety of the rope. With such fishing-tackle the whale, once fast, has a poor chance. We hauled up alongside and gave her another shot that settled her.

All the interest of modern whaling lies in the stalking; I should imagine that it requires more skill and knowledge to bring a steam-vessel into position for discharging a gun with a limited arc of training than to get fast with a harpoon thrown in any direction from any one of three or four small boats. The subsequent proceedings are merely butchery.

Or, if you like, because anybody who does anything nowadays without an ostensibly commercial motive is suspect, I went to prospect for an anchorage in the Belgica Straits in which to moor that visionary ship which will carry a select party of mountaineers to a place where the snow is always in good condition for walking or ski-running; where avalanches are almost unknown and séracs take a year to fall; where the weather is always fine and no winds ever blow; and where, if any one wants to desert the honest ice for acrobatic feats on rock, he can get as good steep granite as at Chamonix.

I fear that I have not enough information to float the affair. Mail steamers cannot be at the same time surveying ships, and the exigencies of trade took me away all too soon, back to stormy Stanley. And as Stanley was fearful bathos after the Solvay Mountains, I lost no time in getting my ship ready for sea and my papers made out for Dublin.

SINCE French cookery is the best in Europe, the classics of gastronomy belong naturally to French literature; and perhaps English readers do not sufficiently realise that such works exist and are delightful reading first, because, like books on sport, they are records of enjoyment. But eating covers a larger field in life than fishing, hunting, golf, or even gardening; the history of the table is closely connected with the history of civilisation. "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are," is an aphorism in the chief of these classics, and " 'how you eat is even more important to ascertain. Man is not only gregarious, but a social animal: nutrition, the first animal need, links itself rapidly with necessities for companionship that involve his spirit; and ultimately he shows himself for what he is in the act of eating and of assisting others to eat. Hospitality is one of the pleasantest expressions of humanity, and the French traditional quality of politeness is never more admirably displayed than in the care which they constantly take to devise entertainment for a guest. To plan a good repast you must be able to appreciate it, and to appreciate you must enjoy; in this re

spect the French have always studiously qualified for their duty as hosts. Also, they have constantly taken the view of the old noble who dressed ceremonially when he dined alone, saying that no more respected guest sat at his table. But with the French this self-respect expressed itself in the dinner rather than in the dress.

France's supremacy in the gastronomic art is comparatively recent. Cooks and cookery perished in the dark ages except along the Mediterranean, where civilisation was oldest and at the Renaissance this learning also had to be diffused from Italy. Still we know that the other arts blossomed with extraordinary speed and vigour in France when the impulse came, and it is hard to believe that a French omelette of the fifteenth century was not already all that an omelette should be. Yet maybe it lacked one thing-pepper. Cookery, like war, has developed out of knowledge in modern times. Pepper certainly existed in the early Middle Ages, but it was scarce, like all the spices, till the mariner's compass compass and Columbus and the rest brought strange new material from across the ocean. Coffee was offered for sale in Paris first at the Foire de St Germain in 1670. Liqueurs were only in