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The cut rye, the coarse steppe grass, the milkwort, the wild hemp, all withered from the sultry heat, turned brown and half dead, now washed by the dew and caressed by the sun, revived, to fade again. Arctic petrels flew across the road with joyful cries; marmots called to one another in the grass. Somewhere, far away to the left, lapwings uttered their plaintive notes.
"Come, come!" said the petrels to the molly-mocks in "Water Babies." "This young gentleman is going to Shiny Wall. He is a plucky one to have gone so far. Give the little chap a cast over the ice-pack for Mother Carey's sake." Gilbert was delighted, in a new place, to find a boy friend of his own age, and Cyril's speedy attachment gratified his pride. Gilbert was doing well these summer months.
Soon after that, another arrived, and although we were more than a thousand miles from any shore, we were speedily scented out and surrounded by hosts of gonies, stinkards, haglets, gulls, pigeons, petrels, and other sea-birds, which commenced to feed on pieces of the whale's carcass with the most savage gluttony. These birds were dreadfully greedy.
Portable soup, essence of malt, and sour krout were now served out to the ship's company. The weather was thick and foggy, which prevented us from getting any observation until the 22d, when our latitude, at noon, was 53° 59' south, and the longitude, by the time-keeper, 231° 36' east. A number of sheerwaters and petrels were about the ship. We had frequent squalls, attended with hail and snow.
Two sperm and two large blue whales were sighted, the first we had seen for 260 miles. We saw also petrels, numerous adelies, emperors, crab- eaters, and sea-leopards.
The only specimens of quadrupeds, birds, fish and cetacea were a few wild boars, stormy petrels, albatrosses, perch and seals. Here and there thermal springs and chalybeate waters escaped from the black lava, and thin dark vapors rose above the volcanic soil. Some of these springs were very hot. John Mangles held his thermometer in one of them, and found the temperature was 176 degrees Fahrenheit.
Its food is essentially marine; and it is seldom seen in numbers, except in the highways of open water frequented by the whale and the larger representatives of ocean life. They were in numbers flitting and hovering over the crests of the waves, like their relatives of kinder climates, the Cape of Good Hope pigeons, Mother Carey's chickens, and the petrels everywhere else.
A short time after the flights of birds became more and more numerous. Petrels, puffins, and mates, inhabitants of those desolate quarters, signalled the approach of Greenland. The Forward was rapidly nearing the north, leaving to her leeward a long line of black smoke.
Between latitudes 56 and 57 degrees south of Cape Horn, the net was put astern several times; it never, however, brought up anything besides a few of two extremely minute species of Entomostraca. Yet whales and seals, petrels and albatross, are exceedingly abundant throughout this part of the ocean.
There are several other species of petrels, but I will only mention one other kind, the Pelacanoides Berardi which offers an example of those extraordinary cases, of a bird evidently belonging to one well-marked family, yet both in its habits and structure allied to a very distinct tribe. This bird never leaves the quiet inland sounds.
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