2 
Wild Life in Southern Seas. 
them. And in and about the rocks, and hover¬ 
ing over the white gleam of sandy bottom that, 
like a great table of ivory, lay between them 
and the cliff-bound shore, swam droves of 
bright, pink-coloured schnapper, and great, 
lazily moving blue-fish. Half a mile away a 
swarm of white gulls floated motionless upon 
the blue expanse ; upon the time-worn fore¬ 
shore boulders beneath us stood lines and groups 
of black divers, with wings outspread in solemn 
silence, gazing seaward. 
We had climbed the headland to look for 
whales ; for it was the month of October, when 
the great schools of humpbacks and finbacks 
were travelling southward to colder seas from 
their breeding grounds among the Bampton 
Shoals, nine hundred miles away, north-east. 
For three weeks they had been passing south, 
sometimes far out from the land, sometimes 
within a mile of the shore—hundreds of 
thousands of pounds’ worth of rich blubber, 
with never a whaleship nor whaleboat’s crew 
within two thousand miles ; for the brave old 
days of Australian whaling enterprise died full 
thirty years ago. 
At last, a mile or so away, a jet of smoky 
