FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
floated in the black and glassy sea, were tinted with the 
most delicate of colours — faint purples and rosy hues, 
blues, and greens, passing into translucent yellows. At 
midnight the solitude was grand and impressive, perhaps 
the more so since we had for well-nigh a week been 
drifting among bergs, with dense fog and very squally 
weather. No sound disturbed the silence ; at times a 
flock of the beautiful sheath-bills would hover round the 
vessel, fanning the air with their soundless wings. All 
was in such unison, all in such perfect harmony ; but it 
was a passing charm. ■ Soon we had to think of more 
prosaic things, and reluctantly we turned our thoughts to 
the cargo we were to seek.. 
This is the picture of a calm midnight in mid-summer, 
different, indeed, from the heavy weather we experienced 
at other times, when for days we sheltered behind bergs 
and streams of pack, during black nights thick with fog 
or snow. One of the gales we encountered, the skipper 
described as the hardest that ever blew in the Arctic or 3 
Antarctic ; and, indeed, it was stiff. For ten hours we 
steamed as hard as we could against it, and at the,, end 
had only made one knot. Picture to yourselves a sailing- 
vessel : what a different agency we have now ! Where 
Cook, Ross, Weddell, and others would have been in the 
greatest peril, we with steam were comparatively safe. 
The records of air temperature are very remarkable ; 
our lowest temperature was 20'8° Fahr., our highest 37-6° 
Fahr.— only a difference of i6'8° Fahr. in the total range 
for a period extending slightly over two months. Com- 
pare this with our climate, where in a single day and 
