CHAPTER III 
T T is just possible that there are persons living in London 
and .other remote parts of the country who may not 
have heard anything about this whaling expedition from 
Dundee to the Antarctic. For their benefit I shall here 
give a short account of its origin and 'the gran' com- 
murrcial aspecs o' the expedeetion.' 
The Balcena mysticetus, right whale, Bowhead or 
Greenland whale, or whatever the reader may choose to 
call it, is, as he perhaps already knows, of great value 
on account of the bone in its mouth. You will find in 
the Ladies Pictorial plenty of pictures of the people who 
keep up the price, .pr you can see them half alive in the 
streets — willowy things with their blood all squeezed into 
their heads. The whalebone in the jaws of one whale 
sometimes is worth two or three thousand pounds. 
Naturally, a whale with such a fortune in its mouth has 
been in great request, and in consequence has become so 
scarce, or so retiring, that of late years Arctic whalers 
have found their formerly profitable industry almost a 
failure. 
To make a new start, the Nimrods of Peterhead, three 
brothers Gray, of Arctic fame, proposed taking their ships 
to the Antarctic to look for whales there. From the 
account given by Sir James Ross of his voyage of dis- 
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