SEALS AND SEAL-HUNTING. 107 



cass, it cannot be particularly savoury. It is different, 

 however, with whale-flesh, that of the bottlenose at 

 least. Shetlanders don't eat it ; but the Faroese do, 

 and esteem it highly. I remember, many years ago, 

 being in Thorshavn shortly after a shoal of about 

 twelve hundred bottlenoses had been driven ashore, 

 and the houses of the little town were all covered with 

 long festoons of whale-flesh hung up to dry and harden 

 in the sun. The natives call it grind, and regard it as 

 excellent, palatable, and nutritious food. I ate some 

 of it. It looked and tasted very much hke good 

 coarse-grained beef, and had no unpleasant, fishy, or 

 blubbery flavour. 



Seal-hunting is splendid sport — superior, I confi- 

 dently affirm, to every other species of sport in this 

 country at least, not excepting deer-stalking and fox- 

 hunting. The game is a noble animal, large, powerful, 

 exceedingly sagacious, intensely keen of sight and 

 hearing, suspicious, shy and wary. You have to seek 

 him amid the wildest and grandest scenery, where 

 you will sometimes encounter danger of various kinds. 

 To be a successful seal-hunter you must be acquainted 

 with the habits of the animal. You must be cool and 

 cautious, yet prompt and fertile in expedients, a good 

 stalker, a good boatman, and a good cragsman ; and 

 you must be at once a quick and a steady shot. It is 

 not enough to strike a seal ; you must shoot him with 

 a bullet through the brain, and thus kill him instantly, 

 or you will in all probability never see him again. He 

 may be lying basking on a rock within forty yards of 



