1894.] Geography and Travels. 695 
in height, and their depth below the surface must have been at least 
1,400 feet. It is certain that they come from some more southern part 
of the Antarctic region. 
Skirting the shores, Larsen saw numbers of islands and rocks, all 
volcanic and mostly basaltic, rising out of the sea almost as perpen- 
dicular as the icebergs, and presenting little surface on which snow can 
rest. He succeeded, however, in landing on Seymour Island, and 
pushed some distance into it, though the walk was most difficult across 
the deep valleys and over the high rocks. Great numbers of penguins 
had their nests there, and in the interior he found several dead seals. 
These penguins are peculiar to the Antarctic regions, and their rook- 
eries are very curious. They are occupied by countless numbers of the 
common black-throated penguins, and the nests are crowded together 
in square blocks formed by paths intersecting one another almost at 
right angles. The whalers of the previous year said that these rooker- 
ies, viewed through a telescope from the ship's head, had the appear- 
ance of hair brushes, the penguins representing the bristles. 
It was about eighty miles north of the Antarctic Circle that Larsen 
discovered a chain of five little islands, extending in a straight line 
from northwest to southeast. The most northern is about ten miles 
from the mainland. Two of these islands are active volcanoes. The 
captain and his mate fastened on their snow-shoes and crossed on the 
ice to one of the islands. A large volume of smoke poured from both 
of the voleanoes, but neither of them was ejecting lava or solid matter 
at the time, though the ice in the neighborhood was strewn with vol- 
canic stones that had recently been hurled out of the craters. There 
was no snow on these volcanic masses. 
On his journey south, Capt. Larsen saw many whales and seals. It 
is well-known that the Dundee whalers turned their attention to the 
Antarctic regions in 1892, in the hope of finding the true whalebone 
whale, which Sir James Ross believed he saw there. The Dundee 
fleet, however, saw neither this variety nor any sperm whale. They 
saw any number of finners, which were so tame that the ships actually 
struck them sometimes before they would get out of the way. Now 
and then these enormous creatures, not less then eighty feet in length, 
jump like a salmon, every portion of their bodies being clear of the 
water. The hunchback whale, which was found there in great num- 
bers, is another interesting species. The whalers say that neither sal- 
mon nor trout fishing can equal the hunchback for sport. Larsen 
hunted one which, on being harpooned, ran the five lines in the first boat 
straight out and got free. Four additional harpoons and six — 
