FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 131 
Davis Straits, — fishing and shooting that we in Scotland 
would give our ears for. 
Why do our traders not go up to the Straits and make 
settlements, and tin salmon, and trade in skins? On the 
south-east side of Greenland there are a few Danish settle- 
ments, but the east coast of the Strait is practically un- 
limited, only two Peterhead men spend the winter there 
with the natives. Surely fortunes are to be made where 
you can get a white bear-skin or a narwhal's horn for a 
dozen cartridges or a rifle dog-head, where you can fill 
a ship with reindeer hams or land hundreds of salmon at 
a haul. What think ye of this last, you scringe-netting, 
poaching yachtsmen (with whom I sympathise), you who 
risk fines and ignominy for a basket of sea-trout ? 
Wednesday, 16th. — Lat. 34.2; long. 39.16. We caught 
three stormy petrels to-day with a Tweed-cast and 
finished them with chloroform. I consider myself a fairly 
lucky fisherman usually, but the albatross beats me alto- 
gether. A salmon fly he broke and threw aside in scorn, 
and a cod hook he hung on to with his hard beak till he 
bent it straight, and then went off chuckling and swallowed 
the bait. Seeing the hand of fate in this, I wound up 
my line and left the albatross-catching to others, and by- 
and-bye the same bird came circling round, and seeing a 
tempting strip of bacon fat he sat down beside it and 
picked it up. This time it had the sail-maker's hook inside 
the bacon, something like a large button hook with a 
sharp point, and this caught in the curved tip of his great 
bill, and willy-nilly he had to come on board. He did 
