This bird would
have been a treasure to me, but we could not risk life for it, so it had
to remain where it was. It was a curious fact that with as much clean ice
to live on as they could have wished for, these destitute derelicts of a
flourishing colony, now gone north to sea on floating bay ice, should
have preferred to remain standing on the only piece of bay ice left, a
piece about ten feet square and now pressed up six feet above water
level, evidently wondering why it was so long in starting north with the
general exodus which must have taken place just a month ago. The whole
incident was most interesting and full of suggestion as to the slow
working of the brain of these queer people. Another point was most weird
to see, that on the _under_ side of this very dirty piece of sea-ice,
which was about two feet thick and which hung over the water as a sort of
cave, we could see the legs and lower halves of dead Emperor chicks
hanging through, and even in one place a dead adult. I hope to make a
picture of the whole quaint incident, for it was a corner crammed full of
Imperial history in the light of what we already knew, and it would
otherwise have been about as unintelligible as any group of animate or
inanimate nature could possibly have been. As it is, it throws more light
on the life history of this strangely primitive bird.
Pages:
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214