192 
FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
American markets, where there are many Roman Catholics. 
The fish cure well, though not quite so well as cod, for 
they absorb rather more salt. 
We had still some time before breakfast to collect 
natural history specimens, so I went up the loch in the 
punt, whilst Bruce naturalised generally along the shore. 
In about two hours I had five different kinds of birds : 
Loggerhead, Black-back, King Shags, large reddish-brown 
Gulls, with spotted legs and deep wings, and Grey Gulls. 
Life, it is said, is made up of small things. Breakfast at 
Government House was not one of these. Lady Golds- 
worthy had prepared us a Scotch breakfast suited to 
men doing twenty miles a day for ten brace, or fresh from 
the rolling forties. We attacked it like savages, and 
appreciated details like epicures. The pleasant society, 
the warmth and comfort, and the large rooms with the 
faint perfume of peat and oat-cake were in delightful con- 
trast to our late life. There must be many who recall 
similar pleasant memories of this kindly oasis on the 
lonely islands of the stormy South Atlantic. 
The solitude of these islands is prettily expressed by 
the name the Spaniards gave them — the Malvinas. Mal- 
vina is a lonely, sad heroine in Celtic poetry, the widow 
of Oscar, Ossian's son. To her in his old age Ossian 
sings his songs. I read, and I am told positively, that the 
Spaniards who took the islands forcibly from the French 
called them ' Malvinas * because the first French settlers 
who came there were supposed to have come from St 
Malo. Is this probable? Is it not much more likely 
that the Spaniards, instead of coining Malvina from St. 
