May I here offer a few notes picked up on the subject of whales, etc. The sperm or cachalot whale is a dangerous and bold fighter and is perhaps the most interesting of all cetaceans. His skin, like that of the porpoise, is as thin as gold-beaters' leaf. Underneath it is a coating of fine hair or fur, not attached to the skin, and then the blubber. He has enormous teeth or tushes in the lower jaw, but has no baleen. He devours very large fish, even sharks, but his principal food seems to be cuttle-fish and squids, some of them of as great bulk as himself. These cuttle-fish's tentacle discs are as big as soup-plates, and surrounded by hooks as large and sharp as tiger claws; while their mouths are armed with a parrot-like beak capable of rending anything held to them by the tentacles. These disc hooks are often found in ambergris, an excretion of the sperm whale. The sperm whale spouts diagonally, other whales upwards. So-called porpoise leather is made of the skin of the white whale. The porpoise is the true dolphin, the sailor's dolphin being a fish with vertical tail, scales and gills. Bonitoes are a species of mackerel, but warm-blooded and having beef-like flesh.
Near Hobart I saw the famous fruit and hop lands on the Derwent River. It was midsummer here and extremely hot, hotter than in Melbourne or anywhere else on this trip. From Hobart I railed to Launceston and thence steamer to Melbourne.
Melbourne is a very handsome city as we all know. It was my hope to continue on with S—— north by the Barrier Reef, or rather between the reef and the mainland, and so on to China, Japan, Corea, and home by Siberia; but my doctor advised me not to attempt it, so I booked passage for Colombo instead, and S—— and myself necessarily parted. But it was with much regret that I missed this wonderful coasting trip, long looked forward to and now probably never to be accomplished. On my way home I visited beautiful Adelaide, and the younger city, Perth, which reminded me much of the West American mining towns. Colombo needs no call for notice. At Messina we saw the ruined city, the devastation seeming to have been very terrible; but it presented no such awful spectacle of absolutely overwhelming destruction as did San Francisco. Etna was smoking; Stromboli also. Then Marseilles, Paris, and home.
During that summer at home I was fortunate enough to see the polo test matches between Hurlingham and Meadowbrook teams, otherwise England versus America. It was a disheartening spectacle. The English could neither drive a ball with accuracy nor distance; they "dwelt" at the most critical time, were slow in getting off, overran the ball, and in fact were beaten with ease, as they deserved to be.
An even more interesting experience was a visit to the aviation meeting at Rheims, the first ever held in the world, and a most successful one. Yet the British Empire was hardly represented even by visitors. Such great filers as Curtis, Lefevre, Latham, Paulhan, Bleriot and Farman were all present.
In the autumn I had a week's salmon-fishing at Garynahine in the Lews. The weather was not favourable and the sport poor considering the place. Close by is the Grimersta river and lodge, perhaps the finest rod salmon fishery in Scotland. A young East Indian whom I happened to know had a rod there, and was then at the lodge. On asking him about fishing, etc., he told me, and showed me by the lodge books, that the record for this river was fifty-four salmon in one day to one rod, all caught by the fly! The fortunate fisherman's name? Mr Naylor! the very man I had travelled with to New Zealand! I have vainly tried for three seasons now to get a rod on this river, if only for a week, and at £30 a week that would be long enough for me. I also this autumn had a rod on the Dee, but only fished twice; no fish and no water. During this summer I golfed very determinedly, buoyed up by the vain hope of becoming a first-class player—a "scratch" man. Alas! alas! but it is all vanity anyway! What does the angler care for catching a large basket of trout if there be no one by to show them to? And what does the golfer care about his game if he have not an opponent or a crowd to witness his prowess? At Muirfield I enjoyed the amateur championship—R. Maxwell's year.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] See Appendix.