50 The Mysticetus, or Right Whale 



engirdling sweep, makes the ice-islands toss and whirl 

 like chips in a mill-race — where, even in summer, 

 the weather is more severe than in our worst winters, 

 and gale follows gale with a monotony of fury that is 

 amazing — there is no place for either men or animals 

 except those fully equipped for, and indifferent to, the 

 hardest weather on our planet. 



Little more remains to be said of the Mysticetus. 

 In greater measure than his brother of the north, the 

 Southern Right Whale is unmolested ; indeed, it is 

 doubtful whether a dozen individuals are taken in the 

 course of a year, and those more by accident than 

 design. Consequently their numbers are increasing 

 rapidly, and as their favourite haunts are becoming less 

 and less disturbed by the passage of ships they are 

 gradually, after two hundred years of terror, reverting 

 to their primitive condition of peaceful seclusion from 

 all foes except the three natural ones already mentioned, 

 so that in a few years it will be possible to sail, if 

 yachtsmen are venturous enough, into great silent 

 spaces of sea embracing many thousands of square 

 miles that are never furrowed by any ship's keel, where 

 the great mammals of the deep sea roam in immense 

 herds fearlessly, because all unused to molestation, and 

 live their ordered, happy lives out to their full extent 

 without any interference from man whatever. 



