THE PACIFIC 209 



of discontent passed — there was yet so much to be seen in that 

 great ocean. 



The author was asked to talk to the college boys about charting 

 the seas. The Headmaster welcomed him with the news that he 

 had been a prisoner of war in Germany with Buck Baker, and 

 thus knew something of naval surveyors. During the lecture the 

 author nearly committed a faux pas, but checked himself just in 

 time. He had been about to refer to the discovery of New Zea- 

 land by Captain Cook when he became aware of the dusky faces 

 of those whose ancestors had reached the Land of the Long White 

 Cloud some hundreds of years before Captain Cook set sail. 



The real discoverers were depicted on the red-ochre pillars of 

 the school hall where the boys were gathered ; curvilinear carvings 

 showed them with lolling tongues, three-fingered hands and 

 flashing eyes of pawa shell. These forebears had sailed on a great 

 oceanic expedition long before Columbus was born. 



The half-way break was soon over and the ship was at sea again 

 investigating the shoals on the western side of the Kennadec 

 Trench and the depths of the great trench itself. 



The waters about New Zealand are a delight to the watcher 

 of ocean birds from the Northern Hemisphere, for he encounters 

 a new world of birds. The ship was usually attended by at least 

 half-a-dozen Wandering Albatross in their various plumages, 

 ranging from the scruffy brown youngster, through the brown and 

 white spotted 'leopard stage' to the inagnificent old birds almost 

 white from wing-tip to wing- tip. There is also, in fewer numbers, 

 the smaller dapper Black-browed Albatross and the black and 

 browTi Giant Petrel who tries, without success, to emulate the 

 soaring albatross; but where they have grace the petrel is un- 

 gainly, its wings being short and broad rather than long and 

 tapering. Other types of petrels abound, the most striking being 

 the Cape Pigeon with its wings spotted white on black, like a 

 domino, and the small Cook Petrel which reveals in its cart- 

 wheeling flight an under-wing surface of startling whiteness edged 

 with black. 



As the ship journeyed northwards the birds became fewer until 

 quite suddenly one morning, in latitude about ig degrees south, 

 Challenger's men realised that they had seen their last Wandering 



