Chapman. — On the Idaiids south of Neiv Zealand. 519 



shattered senses, though my ahiiost hermetically-closed box 

 looked all right. I rushed out to the bath half awake. The 

 galleries smelt as my room did. The bathroom was just as 

 bad. Then I remembered the faint odours of the Snares 

 (which, by the way, we had smelt a mile across the sea), and 

 I knew what had happened : we were steaming among the 

 bird islands. The Bounties are sixteen rocky islets, running 

 up to a few hundred feet at the highest. They have no soil 

 upon them. Wherever there is room there sits a crested 

 penguin. The largest islet is 30 acres in extent, and under 

 the lee of this we anchored. From the anchorage we could see 

 half the islands ; but the "nearest one to us carried no birds, 

 as the sea can wash over it. Even at the distance of half a 

 mile the noise of the birds was deafening. It rose and fell 

 with a cadence like that observable in the forests of Australia 

 when the locusts or cigalc are numerous, or near marshes where 

 frogs abound. I wanted to land, and as boats w^ere sent ashore 

 two of us ventured in them. We found the rocks too steep to 

 get up any distance, so we gave it up. The steward and the 

 carpenter went up a short way. Here the stench was simply 

 awful. We watched the penguins swarming over the rocks 

 for awhile. The great nellies swam about us ; the moUy- 

 mawks sat beside their big young ones among the penguins 

 on the rocks ; the wliale-birds, too, made their homes in the 

 deeper crevices. It is good to think that some creatures 

 can stand the smell of penguins. Heavens ! what a place 

 to be marooned in ! There was a depot here too, but light- 

 ning has destroyed it, and the sea is rarely fine enough to 

 allow material to be landed to repair it. A sail is provided to 

 catch water. Fortunately there is no suspicion that anybody 

 was ever wrecked here. It is, however, a fact worth noting 

 that, though no homeward-bound ship from Otago has ever 

 been missed, half a dozen from Lyttelton have gone out which 

 have never been heard of. The last of these, the " Marl- 

 borough," left on tlie 11th January. She is not likely to have 

 touched either this or the Antipodes group, as we should pro- 

 bably have found some trace of her. We sighted the " Rangi- 

 tikei," from Otago, two days out, soon after leaving these 

 islands. We were glad to get back to the ship with her evil 

 smell — away from the noise and the intolerable stench of the 

 island. In moving away the captain took us slowly past the 

 largest face of the largest island ; it was one mass of penguins. 

 Crowded as they were, I judged that there were a milhon 

 penguins on the 100 acres of land in the group. There must 

 have been fully as many — perhaps twice as many — in the 

 water, for they were in flocks for luiles out. Sir William 

 Jervois and Captain Fairchild once made a calculation, and, I 

 believe, concluded that five million penguins resorted there. 



