AN ANTARCTIC VOYAGE.* WHILE we hear so much of Arctic

expeditions and daring attempts on "the great white gate that never was opened yet," it is not a little strange that so little interest is taken in the Southern Continent of ice. At the present moment there are at least two explorers, Messrs. Nansen and Jackson, striving to discover the North Pole, and the papers have been stirred to a mild excitement during the last few days by the fate of a daring naturalist cast away on Kolguev, the lonely island to the north of Archangel. But save for a short stay by the Challenger,' the Antarctic Continent seems to have been unvisited since the expedition of Ross in the early forties. The book before us is a record of an attempt to fill up this gap in our geographical knowledge. Not that the expedition of the Bala3ne,' and her hardy consorts was under- taken from the promptings of scientific curiosity. In fact, Mr. Burn Murdoch is constantly lamenting the sordid com- mercialism of the whole thing, and regretting that it could not have been a voyage of discovery instead of an acquisition of " hawbees " in the shape of seal-blubber. But at least this fascinating record opens up a new avenue in our experience. We are introduced to places unknown to any man of this generation, and in some cases the expedition seems to have reached portions of the globe entirely unvisited before. Moreover, this expedition derives additional interest from the fact that for the first time it carried an artist to the Antartic, and thus acquaints us with the forms and shapes of ice-bound peaks and an that were hitherto scarce more than names.

The expedition was, as we have stated, a purely commercial affair. It hailed from Dundee, and had been organised by the "canny folk" of that ugly town to discover new whaling- grounds, and a supply whales from a new quarter. The ships were whaler-built, the crews seem to have been mostly whaling-hands with much experience of the Northern seas, and the whole voyage was—mirabila dicin—eonstruoted on a teetotal plan, at least for the " foc's'le hands." The earlier part of the book is taken up with their trials in the North Atlantic, the gales that delayed their progress off the West Coast of Scotland and Ireland, with the heat and colour and idleness in the tropics, and with their stay in the Falkland Islands, the first lend touched by the Baleana" since leaving Dundee. Perhaps this portion of the work is a trifle too long —we are more than half-way through its three hundred and fifty pages before we reach the ice—but it is all so delightfully told, with so many little digressions and episodes in the monotonous sea-life, and with such a keen eye for the colour and picturesqueness of the ever-changing entourage, that the reader, as he goes along, is in no mood to complain. The s From Edxliburgh to tho AM000tio. By W. B. Burs Murdoch. rondos t Lsnimmas, Orem, sod Co. Mt

writer fully appreciates, and takes infinite delight in, the new circumstances wherein he finds himself :—

" The sea is deep-blue this evening tinged with red from a fino weather sunset Porpoises play round our stern, leaping out of the deep blue with a sigh and a shower of sparkling drops ; for a second they hang with a glint of the setting sun on their black polished shoulders, then plunge like a cannon-shot into the darkening waves, leaving a phosphorescent trail as they dart in a zigzag course beneath and round our hull. How often have I read of these sea effects and heard them described, and yet how poor, thin and feeble was the colouring of the mental pictures I drew. Clark Russell had painted the sea for me with the strong colours of Rubens, Pierre Loti had described its pearly tints with the grace of Corot ; but they had only turned the first pages of an endless, enthralling picture-book."

A few days after leaving the Falkland Islands, where Mr. Murdoch and hie friend Dr. Bruce seem to have fairly revelled in the fauna of that no-man's-land, the Balmna' got well in among the floating-ice of the Antarctic Ocean. The object of the voyage was to capture right whales, —vulgo, " blowheads." In this respect, the voyage was a complete failure. Ross, in his account of the Antarctic fifty years ago, mentions " blowheads " as being very numerous, and it was this relation that fired the greed of the Dundee shipowners. As things turned out, not a single right whale was sighted during the two months (December, 1892, to February, 1893) that the ships spent among the ice. A right whale is apparently a very lucrative catch, the bone in its mouth being alone worth £3,000—a sum that makes the lands- man stare. Thus people seem still speculating whether the right whale does really exist in the Far South, or whether Ross was in error. To make up for this failure, the 'Balaana' and her consorts slaughtered seals and penguins by the thousand—the latter for fresh meat, the former for blubber, The writer expresses not a little disgust at this wholesale slaughter, and really we cannot wonder. The taste for seal products is a highly artificial one, and it seems almost a pity that an animal so beautiful cannot be left in peace : it is fast disappearing in the Arctic, and if we have a few more Balaanaa ' it will rapidly decrease in the Antarctic also. Especially was our author attracted by the penguins and their funny appearance. The book contains many quaint sketches of their doings, and about them Mr. Murdoch has much to say :- "They scurry over the snow in an upright position, like little fat men in black coats and white silk waistcoats. Their bare pink feet show just beneath their waistcoats, but for all that they look as respectable as can be. When they reach the middle of the ice islands, they toddle up some mound of snow and wave their flippers to us with most ridiculous empressentent. I am sure they discuss the new arrivals in their country ; though quank-quank is the only word I distinguish, their attitudes are as expressive as a Shakespearian vocabulary."

He also gives a description of the Antarctic penguin that should prove news to many naturalists. It is, it seems, a very large bird by comparison with the Northern variety :— "They stand about four feet four inches high, but their bulk in proportion is something enormous. They are twice the thick- ness. of any drawings of the species that I have ever seen in books. Either the draughtsmen of these must have drawn from stuffed specimens, whose skin had shrunk in width, or this is some new kind."

From what was previously known of the Antarctic, people had gathered the impression that it was a continent quite

inaccessible, more especially by reason of its fogs. This idea the narrative of Mr. Murdoch does much to dispel. True, the Baleana' seems to have been stopped several times by fogs, and to have been in no small peril thereby ; but these fogs

were not of long duration, and the ship had her fair share of open weather, and was enabled to proceed on her course without much hindrance. The Balsena ' and her consorts

were like most whalers, of very strong build, and could there- fore plough through the pack-ice without damage. Of the scenery and the marvellous atmospheric and chromatic effects that were his delight day after day, let the writer speak for himself :— " Think of all the dreary melancholy, the blank hopelessness described by writers about the Arctic, and you can have but a

faint idea of the sad inhuman solitude there is in this world of

white cliffs and black sea. Take all the grace, softness, and mystery of form and colour together that they have written of, and you can scarcely dream of the delicate beauty of the forms or of the infinite subtlety of the harmonies in white, and silver, and green, and pale-yellow, and blue that we have seen in these last few hours steaming along the pack edge—an endless fairy picture, painted on silk, with a ghostly brush from a palette of pearl."

On the whole, explorers need not despair of coming to a fuller knowledge of the Antarctic Continent before long; and Mr,. Murdoch in one place sketches out a plan whereby an expedition could be fitted out for this end at a cost of about 25,000, and might easily make a profit on its outlay. We can only hope, in the interests of science, that some such enterprise will shortly be undertaken.

Throughout the book are dotted character-sketches of the seamen on board, very racy and interesting. Mr. Burn Murdoch may not be a master of style—the book does not profess to be a treatise de haute gco/e—but he is certainly an admirable yarner, and the multifarious personalities who made up the ship's crew of the Balsona ' stand out before us with a freshness and a piquancy that make them quite delightful. Their superstitions, the "Old Horse day," the drowning of the cat, the burning of one of their number in effigy, are all told with much spirit and sympathy.

Rudyard Kipling has given us hints of the mystery and romance of the sea, and now comes Mr. Murdoch to drive the truth home. The illustrations are all that could be wished; they are, like the stories, full of character and life ; and when the writer turns to landscape, he contrives to infuse not a little tone and colour into his black and white. Mr. Murdoch hopes for another expedition to the South Seas with a freer hand for both artists and men of science,—"I pray I may be he 1" We can do no more than echo this pions wish. In a book which contains so much to instruct, so much to delight, there

are but few things we would wish to see altered. The phrase he uses of sailors when full of drink, "Up to summer Plimsoll line in grog," is excellent—once ; but when repeated it strikee us as superfluous ; and we must demur to the repetition in his volume of that ancient, hoary tale which ends, "Thank God, captain, the men are swearing worse than ever." We had heard this "chestnut" so often that we hoped never to hear it again.