358 Mr. J. Y. Buchanan [May 29, 



midshipman in the Spanish navy, in which he rose to the rank of 

 lieutenant, after which, as a future reigning sovereign, he could not 

 well continue in the service of a foreign country. He then took to 

 the sea on his own account and, in various very small vessels, he made 

 adventurous cruises in the North Atlantic. It is remarkable that in 

 the course of one of these early cruises he came to be lying in his 

 yacht in the Tagus when the Challenger anchored at Lisbon in 

 January 1873, being the first port of call in her long voyage. 



The Prince's first yacht of any size was the Hirondelle, and she 

 was only a schooner of 100 tons. In her he made numerous trips 

 across the Atlantic, prosecuting his researches always by the way. 

 In these cruises he showed what can be accomplished by patience 

 and perseverance; and at the present day it is almost incredible that 

 he carried out successfully both sounding and dredging by hand in 

 depths of as much as 2000 fathoms. It is only those who know 

 what it is to do work of this kind with all the assistance of steam 

 power, who can truly appreciate the qualities of the man who can 

 get it done by sailors labouring round a capstan perhaps for 24 hours 

 or longer. Last summer some of these early soundings were rej^eated 

 in his present perfectly fitted yacht, and they were found to be quite 

 exact. 



It is important to remember that, like the Challenger expedition, 

 the Prince's life-long expedition was begun before there was a science 

 of oceanography, indeed before the word w^as invented, consequently 

 the development which oceanic research received at his hand was 

 mainly determined by his personal originality. He has always been 

 devoted to the chase in all its forms, whether with gun and rifle, or 

 with fishing rod, net and spear, or with the various instruments and 

 methods known to the experienced trapper, and it was mainly the 

 instinct of the trapper backed by the love of natural history that led 

 him to extend the territory of the chase from the worn-out land to 

 the still virgin sea. On board the Princesse Alice and in the new 

 palatial Musee d' Oceanographie at Monaco all departments of oceano- 

 graphical research are cultivated, but the Prince's especial line and 

 the one in which he stands ahead of everybody else is the pursuit 

 and capture of the animals inhabiting the sea. With the instinct of 

 the true trapper his most deadly weapon is his knowledge of the 

 habits ot the animal that he is pursuing. Every advance which he 

 has made in the art of trapping has enriched science by the discovery 

 of new classes of animals and of new regions, previously believed to 

 be desert, which teem with life. For instance, the extension of the 

 use of the lobster-pot or trap to the greatest oceanic depths has 

 revealed a fauna which eluded all attempts to take it with the dredge 

 or trawl, and the habit of examining the contents of the stomach of 

 larger animals has led to the discovery that the intermediate depths 

 of the ocean are inhabited by a gigantic race of octopus more 

 wonderful than any of the fabled animals of antiquity. 



I hope that at no distant date His Highness will be able to lay 



