provided for the purpose. This, when 'tried' or boiled down, furnishes the oil. The most valuable part of the creature is, however, the strainer in its cheeks and throat. This is the whalebone, which nowadays fetches about thirty shillings a pound. At Kalk Bay the folk say that the Whale referred to was worth about £600. It is 45 ft. in length, and the flukes of the tail measured 15 ft. across.
In the 'Wide World Magazine' for May, Mr. C.E. Borchgrevinck contributes an article on "Penguins and their Ways." In our previous volume (p. 192) we gave a notice, with some extracts, of Mr. Borchgrevinck's volume, 'First on the Antarctic Continent,' and the present article supplements the Penguin narrative.
"When we arrived at Victoria Land in the 'Southern Cross,' in February, 1899, only a few Penguins were left, most having gone northwards. We had met them in shoals in the open water, where they jumped about like so many Porpoises round our vessel. Only some stragglers were left on the triangular peninsula at Cape Adare. Not many days after we had landed the last Penguin dived into the sea, and left us to face the stern Antarctic winter alone. Until that memorable Antarctic spring day came, the 14th of October, 1899, no Penguins were to be seen. On that date one lonely old Penguin waddled slowly towards our camp just as the zoologist of the expedition[1] was dying. That first poor Penguin was also destined to meet death on the date of its arrival, for, at the wish of the dying man in the hut, we killed it, as he wanted to examine it.
"Next day several more Penguins arrived, although there was no open water near the coast. They had evidently walked great distances. Soon a continual stream of Penguins walked towards us from over the immense white expanse; they looked for all the world like so many small people rolling from one side to another, with their flippers outstretched like short arms to maintain their equilibrium. They were not in the least frightened of us. Perchance they took us for a new kind of Penguin! Certain it is that they came up to us, walked round about us, and evidently discussed us—in short, examined us thoroughly—before they again started off on the march towards their breeding-places. It was curious to see how they stuck to their Indian-file method of progression, one always travelling in the step of the preceding one, until long tracks in the snow, winding in and out between the ice-blocks, were to be seen towards Cape Adare.
- ↑ Nikolai Hanson.
