FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 195 
colony are rapidly destroying their physique by their 
excess in this drink. Aggravated cases of indigestion are 
the most common complaints, Children and men show 
the effect of it in body and face. 
Our old hostess had left Ireland when she was a mere 
child, but her accent was as soft and rich and as sweet to 
listen to as the sound of running water. She must have 
been eighty years old, at least, and seemed as active as a 
girl, and her memory, too, was clear. Much she spoke of 
the days when she first came to the islands with her 
German husband from Buenos Ayres. That was forty 
years ago. I would like to have remembered all the 
things she told me ; but I was too much taken up with the 
interest of her face and the feeling of the light from the 
peat-fire glinting on the dark rafters to remember details 
of past events. One thing she was sure of, and all the 
other old colonists I met were decidedly of the same 
opinion, and that was that the climate here has steadily 
improved during the last twenty years or so. 
These people had kept a bar before the Company 
absorbed that business, and in the far corner of the room 
was a recess with an ancient counter of dark, worn 
wood now used for dishes. Behind, in the shadow of the 
recess, hung old pewter measures, dusty and disused, dimly 
reflecting rays from the lamp, relics of the days when they 
clinked accompaniments to Spanish Fandangos or rattled 
encores to jolly Jack's sea-song. Round the room, against 
the simple plaster walls, hung pictures of the Saints in 
black frames — a pleasant tie in this new country to the 
old stones of our northern lands. 
