38 WHALE DISCOVERED IN AN ICEBERG. [CHAP. II. 



was placed in it. In 1822, Captain Barnham dug out the body 

 from the ice, and found the clothes and flesh perfectly fresh as 

 when they were buried. 



So far this narrative may be said merely to confirm and to 

 bear out another published by Captain Kendall, of our navy, in 

 the London Geographical Journal, 1830 (pp. 65, 66), where he 

 relates that the soil of Deception Island, one of the South Shet- 

 lands, consists of ice and volcanic ashes interstratified, and he 

 discovered there the body of a foreign sailor, which had long 

 been buried, with the flesh and all the features perfectly pre 

 served. Mr. Darwin, commenting on that fact, has observed, 

 that as the icy soil of Deception Island is situated between lat. 

 62 and 63 S., it is nearer the equator by about 100 miles than 

 the locality where Pallas first found the frozen rhinoceros of Si 

 beria, in lat. 64 N.* 



But Captain Pendleton goes on to relate, that while he was 

 in Deception Island an iceberg was detached from a cliff of ice 

 800 feet high. The piece which fell off was from 60 to 100 feet 

 deep, and from 1500 to 3000 feet in length. At an elevation of 

 about 280 feet above the level of the sea, part of a whale was 

 seen remaining inclosed in the ice-cliff, the head and anterior 

 parts having broken off about the flippers and fallen down with 

 the detached mass of ice. The species was what the whalers 

 call the &quot; Sulphur-bottom,&quot; resembling the fin-back. Captain 

 Pendleton contrived to get out the portion which had fallen, and 

 obtained from it eight or ten barrels of oil. The birds for a long 

 time fed upon the entrails. This fact was known to Captain 

 Beck and others. Captain William Pendleton, another whaler 

 of experience, also informs Mr. Hayes, that skeletons of whales 

 had been met with in the South Shetlaiids, when he visited 

 them, 300 feet above the level of the sea. Thomas Ash also 

 saw, on &quot; Ragged Island&quot; beach, the skeleton and some of the 

 soft parts of a whale many feet above the reach of the highest 

 tides. Captain William Beck, master of a whaling ship, has 

 seen whales bones and carcasses sixty or seventy feet above the 

 sea-level, and a mile and a half from the water. 

 * Darwin s Journal, 2d ed. p. 249. 



