FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
of what stores and provisions he laid in, and so on. 
Such matter may be of service to future travellers, and it 
has the immediate advantage of filling up the first chapter. 
With this latter object in view, I shall explain at some 
length how I come to be writing notes on the heaving 
bosom of the Atlantic instead of drawing pictures at home. 
The writer ought to be drawing in Edinburgh, but that 
became impossible last August ; for the British Associa- 
tion met there, and the people of the University Summer 
Session gathered from the four corners of the world and 
brought with them a fever of intellectual life. Even in 
its outward aspect the town became affected by the influx 
of wise men and women, and the lonely men in the club 
windows looked down on a strange and unfamiliar people : 
blue-veiled Americans, dainty French ladies, festive pro- 
fessors, and blue-stockings crowded the streets where 
were wont to pace tall Edinburgh beauties and impressive 
advocates. Up the.Castle Hill the intellectual contagion 
spread, till the artists and students in the highest, quietest 
rooms of the University Hall were infected, and could no 
longer do their own work, but went foolishly listening to 
others. 
For months past I had been designing a huge frieze of 
our Scotch kings on white horses, jogging along in a row, 
with great men walking beside them on foot. Through 
winter and spring I worked hard, and drew all day and 
read old chronicles at night, and the work went on 
apace. Duncan the Mild and the long line of the children 
of Banquo had passed in procession ; and James the Sixth 
'stopped the way/ when the intellectual carnival began. 
