SEAL-HUNTING SOUTHERN SEAS. m 521 



hunters spend the summer months, which season is literally the 

 1 winter of their discontent,' it is upon Heard's Island that the 

 mammoth game is chiefly, if not exclusively, found. Then it is 

 that the gang of men have the hardihood to build themselves 

 rude cabins upon the island, and there spend the entire winter. 

 Among those who first exiled themselves to this land of fogs 

 and snow and stormy winds, was one Captain Henry Rogers, 

 then serving as first mate, and from his journal, which he kept 

 during this period, we may obtain a realizing sense of the lone- 

 liness and hardships of the life to which Americans, for the 

 love of gain, willingly subject themselves in the far-off Indian 

 Ocean. 



" Having taken a glance [in previous portions of the paper not 

 here quoted] at the leading men who identified themselves with 

 the Desolation Islands, and also at the physical peculiarities of 

 those islands, we propose to conclude this paper with a run- 

 ning account of Captain Henry Eogers' adventures during his 

 winter on Heard's Island. 



"He left New London in the brig Zoe, Captain Jas. Eogers, 

 master, Oct. 26, 1856, and arrived at their place of destination 

 February 13, 1857. For about five weeks after their arrival the 

 crew was kept very busy in rafting to the brig several hundred 

 barrels of oil, which had already been prepared and left over 

 by the crew of a sister vessel, and on the 22d of March, the 

 wintering gang, with Capt. Henry Rogers as their chief leader, 

 proceeded to move their plunder to the shore, and when that 

 work was completed, the brig sailed for the Cape of Good Hope. 

 The gang consisted of twenty-five men, and after building their 

 house, which was merely a square excavation in the ground, 

 covered with boards and made air tight with moss and snow, 

 they proceeded to business. Those who were expert with the 

 lance did most of the killing ; the coopers hammered away at 

 their barrels ; and, as occasions demanded, all hands partici- 

 pated in skinning the huge sea-elephants, or cutting off the blub- 

 ber in pieces of about fifteen pounds each, and then on their 

 back or on rude sledges, transporting it to the trying works, 

 where it was turned into the precious oil. Not a day was per- 

 mitted to pass without i bringing to bay ' a little game, and the 

 number of elephants killed ranged from three to as high a figure 

 as forty. According to the record, if one day out of thirty hap- 

 pened to be bright and pleasant, the men were thankful ; for the 

 regularity with which rain followed snow, and the fogs were 



