82 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
landing was out of the question. We should have broken | 
up the boat and have all been in the water together. But I _ 
assure you it was tantalizing to me, for there about six feet _ 
above us on a small dirty piece of the old bay ice about ten _ 
feet square one living Emperor penguin chick was standing _ 
disconsolately stranded, and close by stood one faithful old — 
Emperor parent asleep. This young Emperor was still in — 
the down, a most interesting fact in the bird’s life history — 
at which we had rightly guessed, but which no one had © 
actually observed before. It was in a stage never yet seen — 
or collected, for the wings were already quite clean of © 
down and feathered as in the adult, also a line down the | 
breast was shed of down and part of the head. This bird 
would have been a treasure to me, but we could not risk 
life for it, so it had to remain where it was. It was a curious © 
fact that with as much clean ice to live on as they could 
have wished for, these destitute derelicts of a flourishing 
colony, now gone north to sea on floating bay ice, should _ 
have preferred to remain standing on the only piece of bay _ 
ice left, a piece about ten feet square and now pressed up 
six feet above water level, evidently wondering why it was _ 
so long in starting north with the general exodus which 
must have taken place just a month ago. The whole inci- _ 
dent was most interesting and full of suggestion as to the © 
slow working of the brain of these queer people. Another — 
point was most weird to see, that on the uxder side of this 
very dirty piece of sea-ice, which was about two feet thick 
and which hung over the water as a sort of cave, we could — 
see the legs and lower halves of dead Emperor chicks hang- 
ing through, and even in one place a dead adult. I hope to © 
make a picture of the whole quaint incident, for it was a _ 
corner crammed full of Imperial history in the light of © 
what we already knew, and it would otherwise have been 
about as unintelligibleas any group of animate or inanimate _ 
nature could possibly have been. As it is, it throws more 
light on the life history of this strangely primitive bird. ... 
“We were joking in the boat as we rowed under these 
cliffs and saying it would bea short-lived amusement to see 
the overhanging cliff part company and fall on us. So we | 
