142 
FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
on their backs. They resembled the American drawings 
of the pigmy sperm, but had a larger dorsal fin. 1 
Saturday, 26th Nov. — We are making a course to the 
East of the Falkland Islands. We intended to keep down 
the Patagonian coast, but these south-westerly gales have 
driven us to the eastward. Every hour, and on all sides, 
there are grand cloud effects, towering white clouds with 
purple rain skirts-trailing across the cold blue sky, and 
rough green sea with blinding hail-showers, alternating 
with sudden gleams of sunlight, and broken shafts of 
rainbow. There is but one man I know, Sinclair, one of 
our Edinburgh artists, who can paint the grandeur of 
1 We saw the same kind of whales in the following March, when we were 
on our voyage home, and nearly in the same position. They were travelling 
northward then in thousands, going about six knots, and considerably slower 
than the rate at which they were swimming south. They were accompanied by 
their young suckers, these were about three feet long. Almost all the whales 
and porpoises we saw south of the line on our voyage out were travelling 
south or south-east, and those we saw on the voyage home were travelling 
north with their young. I conclude they have a grand nursery down in the 
ice, where they bring forth ih'^ir young in the Antarctic summer, and come 
north when the winter sets in. 
