250 



THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



amain as one enters the cove, which might be likened to a great caldron so 

 filled with the macerated bones of whales that they not only bestrew its 

 bottom, but also thickly incrust its rim to the farthest highwater mark. 

 During the next few days I discovered that not King Edward Cove alone, 

 but indeed the whole beach of the south fjord of Cumberland Bay, a shore 

 line of more than twenty-five miles, is lined with an almost inconceivable 

 number of bones, mostly of the humpback whale. Spinal columns, loose 

 vertebra?, flipper bones, ribs and jaws are piled in heaps and bulwarks, and 

 I could count seventy-five or one hundred huge skulls without moving from 

 one spot. The region is one enormous sepulcher, yet no one can guess how 

 many hundreds or thousands of flensed carcasses have been carried out to 

 sea by the tide, and so have sunk their skeletons in the deep. Such reckless 



The whaling brig "Daisy" at anchor in the Bay of Isles 



waste of a material which when manufactured into fertilizer is worth several 

 pounds sterling a ton, was due to the exceeding abundance of whales in 

 South Georgia waters and consequent neglect of all products of secondary 

 importance to the blubber oil. But now the companies are required by law 

 to utilize the entire carcass of the whale, and they have either installed bone- 

 boiling and guano plants at their stations, or have sub-let this branch of the 

 industries to "floating factories," that is vessels especially fitted for the 

 purpose. One of this type, a 2000-ton full-rigged ship, was so occupied at 

 the time of our visit. 



During our sojourn in Cumberland Bay the time was occupied with trips 

 into the surrounding mountainous country, particularly about the magnifi- 

 cent west fjord of the bay, a section reached overland from Grytviken 

 through a high, extinct glacier bed, parts of which are smoothly paved with 

 small fragments of shale packed edgewise by the ice in the manner of a 



