some round, and some arched and pinnacled fantastically. But I preferred the mountains. These were not the old familiar friends; they also were new to me. Down the steep slopes, through mazes of crevasses, over stupendous falls the ice kept its purity unsullied by mud or moraine; and where it broke into the sea in cliffs three hundred feet high, it did not show a speck from top to bottom-a contrast to the dirty snouts of Alpine glaciers. Again, it was new to see nine thousand feet of rock and snow rising from the level of the straits, in which at times the floes became so numerous that one had almost the illusion of a huge glacier filling a flat valley, unlike the tilted slopes which merge gradually into a face, becoming only more steeply tilted. A little farther on came another type of scenery, this a more thoroughly Antarctic type. The high mountains retreated behind flattened domes of nevé; the only rocks seen were such as, rising from the water, were too sharp to support the crumbling and top-heavy snow-cap that covered all the more substantial land. As we progressed the rocks became more numerous; we were among a group of small islands where, tucked into impossible creeks between impending ice-cliffs (but in this cold climate they do not fall as often as one would think), were steamers of eight or ten thousand tons, cutting in and boiling down whales as comfort ably and serenely as if they were in Blacksod Bay. But in our farthest port of call there was trouble. Breeze Harbour looks like a threat of trouble; and only one man is crazy enough to take a big ship into it. The trouble was that a very much bigger iceberg had come in after her and threatened to carry away her moorings and push her into a cul-de-sac where she might be stuck for the winter. One of her catchers was steaming up against it to try and push it out of the way; but as it was a thousand times her weight, the effects were not conspicuous. I had arranged for an excursion up the glacier here, but that confounded iceberg disappointed me. At any moment it might change its front and attack us instead of the factory ship, so we were under short notice for steam. Meanwhile the captain of that vessel took me for a trip round the coast in his launch. I would have given up as many mountain ascents for those three hours; mountains I may climb again, but never shall I have such an intimate acquaintance with icebergs. We sported round them, we darted across them in a swirl of pale green water between their shining pinnacles; we squeezed between rocks red, grey, and yellow, and ice-cliffs white and blue. We squeezed, I think, rather imprudently near the latter. One berg, a huge tricuspid affair, had, as is their manner, its towers set upon its very edge, and sadly undermined by the sea; but one underestimates the toughness of southern ice. This fairyland, for so it was, I did not see at night, when its inhabitants adopt their proper form; by day I believe they change themselves into penguins. I had seen penguins before, but did not know their origin. I came back to port to find two more catchers reinforcing the push-party at the iceberg, and with some help from the tide actually moving it clear of the parent ship. These catchers are most efficient little vessels, fast, handy, perfectly equipped, and of necessity kept in firstclass order, for a chipped propeller, a loose rudder-head, or a slack bearing would give the alarm as they steal on their quarry. They are small enough to turn and twist in the chase, yet large enough to keep the sea in any weather. It is hard to understand how a steamboat some 110 feet long and of 130 tons can get within twenty yards of a whale, for that is about as far as one can trust the harpoon gun, but a whale sighted is generally a whale killed. I do not know how it is done, though I have seen the performance. This is how it appears to the spectator. We raise a spout, perhaps a mile away. The whale usually blows two or three times in quick succession before going down again for ten minutes or so, thus one can judge in what direction she is travelling. The gunner, the captain of the catcher, steadies the helm, and then strolls off the bridge towards the gun platform. On the fore-deck he passes the look-out man, who has just come down from the crow's nest, and borrows a fill of tobacco from him. The latter goes to the wheel, if there is no one already there. Meanwhile spectators emerge from various parts of the ship. When all these adjustments have been made, the whale blows again, right ahead, and a hundred yards away. The helm is shifted a little, and the engines rung slow, the gunner looks for a convenient lee to light his pipe in, then mounts the platform and casts loose the gun. Nobody runs about or shouts, the few orders are given in an undertone. It seems an age of waiting till we see a vague greyness in the blue sea ahead of us. The helmsman gives a little sheer to bring the target well out on the bow and expose her broadside; then the waters are parted and a flat head emerges; the great nostrils follow, throwing a jet of vapour into the air, and sink again. An interminable length of curved back rolls by, the gunner keeps his sights on the waterline, and not till half the whale has passed does he fire. And that is the end of her! Of course, it is not always so easy. In bad weather the gun platform must be a very unhealthy spot, nor could one trace the whale's movements so well in broken water. Some whales, moreover, are perverse, I did not go so far south to and do not steer a steady course. Our second was an expert in the art of zigzagging, and it was some time before the gunner got the run of her manœuvres. In the end it was a lucky shot, at extreme range, that got us fast. In the head of the harpoon is a bursting charge fired by a time-fuse, and a close shot, well directed, will scatter scrapiron all through the whale's vitals and kill her instantaneously. Our forlorn hope got home, but only crippled her, and she set off on the surface with our ship in tow. Then we saw the wonderful gear that makes steam whaling possible. Between the harpoon and the winch the line is played tremendous battery of coiled springs fitted in the hold. Their effective extension is some thirty feet, through which the strain increases to fifteen tons, the limit of safety of the rope. With such fishing-tackle the whale, once fast, has a poor chance. We hauled up alongside and gave her another shot that settled her. All the interest of modern whaling lies in the stalking; I should imagine that it requires more skill and knowledge to bring a steam-vessel into position for discharging a gun with a limited arc of training than to get fast with a harpoon thrown in any direction from any one of three or four small boats. The subsequent proceedings are merely butchery. see whaling, for that one can do as well at home. I went to see ice-ice compacting into glaciers; ice falling in ice-falls; ice forming lofty sea-cliffs; ice breaking off those cliffs into icebergs; and, above all, the marvellous blue ice in the cavities of those floating mountains which are only the remnant of the huge islands that have drifted up from the far Antarctic. Or, if you like, because anybody who does anything nowadays without an ostensibly commercial motive is suspect, I went to prospect for an anchorage in the Belgica Straits in which to moor that visionary ship which will carry a select party of mountaineers to a place where the snow is always in good condition for walking or ski-running; where avalanches are almost unknown and séracs take a year to fall; where the weather is always fine and no winds ever blow; and where, if any one wants to desert the honest ice for acrobatic feats on rock, he can get as good steep granite as at Chamonix. I fear that I have not enough information to float the affair. Mail steamers cannot be at the same time surveying ships, and the exigencies of trade took me away all too soon, back to stormy Stanley. And as Stanley was fearful bathos after the Solvay Mountains, I lost no time in getting my ship ready for sea and my papers made out for Dublin. THE CLASSICS OF THE TABLE. BY STEPHEN GWYNN AND ELIZABETH LUCAS. SINCE French cookery is the best in Europe, the classics of gastronomy belong naturally to French literature; and perhaps English readers do not sufficiently realise that such works exist and are delightful reading first, because, like books on sport, they are records of enjoyment. But eating covers a larger field in life than fishing, hunting, golf, or even gardening; the history of the table is closely connected with the history of civilisation. "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are," is an aphorism in the chief of these classics, and "how you eat is even more important to ascertain. Man is not only gregarious, but a social animal: nutrition, the first animal need, links itself rapidly with necessities for companionship that involve his spirit; and ultimately he shows himself for what he is in the act of eating and of assisting others to eat. Hospitality is one of the pleasantest expressions of humanity, and the French traditional quality of politeness is never more admirably displayed than in the care which they constantly take to devise entertainment for a guest. To plan a good repast you must be able to appreciate it, and to appreciate you must enjoy; in this re spect the French have always studiously qualified for their duty as hosts. Also, they have constantly taken the view of the old noble who dressed ceremonially when he dined alone, saying that no more respected guest sat at his table. But with the French this self-respect expressed itself in the dinner rather than in the dress. France's supremacy in the gastronomic art is comparatively recent. Cooks and cookery perished in the dark ages except along the Mediterranean, where civilisation was oldest; and at the Renaissance this learning also had to be diffused from Italy. Still we know that the other arts blossomed with extraordinary speed and vigour in France when the impulse came, and it is hard to believe that a French omelette of the fifteenth century was not already all that an omelette should be. Yet maybe it lacked one thing-pepper. Cookery, like war, has developed out of knowledge in modern times. Pepper certainly existed in the early Middle Ages, but it was scarce, like all the spices, till the mariner's compass and Columbus and the rest brought strange new material from across the ocean. Coffee was offered for sale in Paris first at the Foire de St Germain in 1670. Liqueurs were only in vented by the combined device markably lit up by the study of chemists and cooks to warm the old age of Louis XIV., and they were not in common use until the time of his successor. Even sugar was almost a rarity in the seventeenth century. From the grand siècle onwards it may be said that the art possessed all its necessary resources, and made great strides; but though there were cooks, they at best, like the early painters, received merely verbal commendation. Criticism as a branch of literature scarcely begins before the eighteenth century; and to cookery it was only applied after a social upheaval had threatened to abolish this most social of all the arts. There were, of course, technical treatises, some dating away back into the Middle Ages; but the modern literature of the kitchen begins with Grimod de la Reynière, and though he was a forerunner and founded a school, he actually outlived Brillat - Savarin, the creator of its masterpiece. Both men were, as Balzac puts it, astride of two centuries; both saw the transition from the old régime to the new, and both wrote under the stimulus of this change. They felt the impulse to express an enjoyment which the circumstances of their time had rendered more vivid, and also to characterise the great alteration in manners which they had observed. of Grimod de la Reynière and his group, published by M. Desnoiresterres in 1877. His father was a fermier-général, and immensely rich. Tradition relates that the fortunes of the family began in a sausagemaker's shop, and that the author of the Almanach des Gourmands' delighted to embellish his apartments with festoons of sausages. It is probable that Grimod did this, or anything else that could annoy his parents; but he was certainly no sausage-maker's son: the dynasty of taxfarmers whose opulence he inherited was richly established a century before the Revolution. The second of these died at Paris 1754, of an indigestion caused by pâté de foie-gras. He kept the best table in Paris, and Voltaire wrote him a letter requesting that the poet's cook might be allowed to assist for a few days in the financier's kitchen. "A cook grows rusty in an invalid's establishment," Voltaire wrote, and the fine arts ought to be encouraged." Grimod de la Reynière the third, succeeding to his share of a fortune reckoned at fourteen million (in francs, it is true, but still not a bagatelle), succeeded also to the taxfarming post, and looked out for a distinguished marriage. The bride was Mlle. de Jarente, niece to the Bishop of Orleans, Anybody interested in the and she always resented an curious and morbid phase of alliance that put her out of Parisian society which preceded the court circle: it was said the Revolution will find it re- that she was an excellent |