FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
diet. But a jollier, finer set of men one could not wish to 
see — roughly clothed, tanned, tarred, and weather-beaten, 
— pulling together on board and on shore in a way that 
did one good to see. It was a great sight that bar — 
one of the pictures on the voyage that I shall not forget. 
The eager, jovial crowd of sailors filling the rough colonial 
bar, each with his glass in his fist and his pipe in the 
corner of his mouth, talking away freely for once of the 
events of the past three months. The few colonials 
were almost crowded out of their usual haunt, and looked 
on in silence, listening to those whalers from the North. 
Braidy, of the grey eyes and the fair hair, got hold of 
a melodeon and played jolly Irish tunes till some began 
dancing ; the second engineer gave us ' Wacht am Rhein 9 
meanwhile, with tremendous force, and the rafters rang 
and the smoke trembled in the air with the din of the 
talk and the singing and the dancers' boots on the floor. 
At last the doctor and I made our escape out of the 
smoke and the racket and went in pursuit of science. 
Some of the crew rowed us across the loch to the north 
side of the harbour, about a mile across, passing the 
Balasna on the way. 
The Rev. Mr. H , not being a good walker, we rather 
unfeelingly left him on the beach picking mosses and 
lichens, and went ahead. Bruce dropped out next to chip 
off pieces of the grey quartzite rock that crops out through 
the peat, and to collect botanical specimens, while H/s man, 
a Swede, and the writer, pelted over the low hills to the 
bay on the north of Port Stanley after wild-fowl. On the 
ridge we could see lots of ducks and geese feeding along 
