Page:South - the story of Shackleton's last expedition, 1914-1917.djvu/485

Rh and in Norway, it has been refined by means of a simple hardening process into a highly palatable and nutritious margarine. Wartime conditions emphasized the importance of the whale oil, and fortunately the supply was fairly constant for the production of the enormous quantities of glycerine required by the country in the manufacture of explosives. In relation to the food supply, it was no less important in saving the country from a "fat" famine, when the country was confronted with the shortage of vegetable and other animal oils. The production of guano, bone-meal, and flesh-meal may pay off the running expenses of a whalingstation, but their value lies, perhaps, more in their individual properties. Flesh-meal makes up into cattle-cake, which forms an excellent fattening food for cattle, while bone-meal and guano are very effective fertilizers. Guano is the meat—generally the residue of distillation—which goes through a process of drying and disintegration, and is mixed with the crushed bone in the proportion of two parts flesh to one part bone. This is done chiefly at the shore stations, and, to a less extent on floating factories, though so far on the latter it has not proved very profitable. Whale flesh, though slightly greasy perhaps and of strong flavour, is quite palatable, and at South Georgia, it made a welcome addition to our bill of fare—the flesh of the hump back being used. A large supply of whale flesh was "shipped" as food for the dogs on the journey South, and this was eaten ravenously. It is interesting to note also the successful rearing of pigs at South Georgia—chiefly, if not entirely, on the whale products. The whalebone or baleen plates, which at one time formed the most valuable article of the Arctic fishery, may here be regarded as of secondary importance. The baleen plates of the southern right whale reach only a length of circa 7 ft., and have been valued at £750 per ton, but the number of these whales captured is very small indeed. In the case of the other whalebone whales, the baleen plates are much smaller and of inferior quality—the baleen of the sei-whale probably excepted, and this only makes about £85 per ton, Sperm whales have been taken at South Georgia and the South Shetlands, but never in any quantity, being more numerous in warmer areas. The products and their value are too well known to be repeated.

The Endurance reached South Georgia on November 5, 1914, and anchored in King Edward Cove, Cumberland Bay, off Grytviken, the shore station of the Argentina Pesca Company. During the month's stay at the island a considerable amount of time was devoted to a study of the whales and the whaling industry, in the intervals