and from whom they also differ in other particulars. These include the Sea-Lion of the Northern seas, about fifteen feet in length, and found chiefly on rocky coasts and islet rocks, on the ledges of which it climbs, and its roaring is sometimes useful as warning sailors of danger. The old males have a fierce aspect, but it is only when driven to extremities that they fight furiously. The Sea-Bear, or Ursine Seal, is an inhabitant of the Northern Pacific, and attains a length of about eight feet. The hinder limbs of this animal being better developed, it can stand and walk almost like a land quadruped. It swims with great swiftness, and is fierce and courageous. The skin is much prized for clothing in the regions where it abounds.

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CHAPTER V.

THE MONARCH OF THE OCEAN.

"Come, coil in the warp, see the hatchets be sharp,
And make ready the irons and lance;

Each man ship his oar, and leave nothing on shore
That is needful the voyage to advance.

See the buoy be made tight,

And the drag fitted right,

See that nothing be wanting anon.

Never doubt, but look out

Round about-there's a spout!

Come away, boys! let's launch if we can!"

Old Ballad on the Greenland Fishery.

F all the industrial pursuits which engage the venturous seaman on the wide ocean, those connected with the capture of the WHALE,

"the mightiest that swims the ocean stream,"

and, I may add, in point of dimensions the monarch also of creation, are the most exciting and perilous; requiring the greatest endurance, hardihood, and courage, and at the same time yielding, under favourable circumstances, a substantial return for the dangers encountered. Large navies are annually sent on these expeditions by various nations, and thousands of sailors get accustomed to the fearful severity of the Polar regions, where the principal whale fishery is carried on, though many lives are lost and ships are destroyed in these enterprises.

58 PECULIARITIES CONNECTED WITH THE WHALE.

Before relating to you some of the exciting adventures which occur in the pursuit and capture of the unfortunate whales, I will give you a few particulars about the animals themselves.

There are many peculiarities to be observed in these huge monarchs of the ocean. They comprise a class of animated creatures distinct from both fishes and land animals, though partaking of the characters of both. They are classed in the order of warm-blooded Mammalia, or creatures that suckle their young; that is to say, they breathe as the land Mammalia, and yet are as completely aquatic as true fish, which are cold-blooded. Fish never breathe, and if removed from the water into the air, they immediately die; but whales, if deprived of air, and confined under the water, would be literally drowned. They usually come to the surface to breathe at intervals of eight or ten minutes, but they are capable of remaining under water nearly an hour. The whale has no gills, but a heart with two ventricles or cells, and very elastic lungs in a great bony chest, into which the air is freely admitted, not through the mouth; for, although the animal is of such prodigious dimensions (some species attaining upwards of one hundred feet in length, and a weight of nearly as many tons), yet the throat is so small that it could not dispose of a morsel which is swallowed by an ox. Through what are popularly called "blowers" or spiracles, huge nostrils which open on the summit of the head, from eight to twelve inches long, but of small breadth, the whale can send a column of moist vapour forty to fifty feet high; and when this breathing, or blowing, is performed under the surface of the ocean, a vast quantity of water is also thrown into the air, and the noise made in this operation can, it is said, be heard at the distance of between two and three miles.

Another peculiarity about these wonderful creatures—which, I should tell you, belong to the class Cetacea (from the Greek word ketos, a whale), and which comprises not only all the varieties of the whale tribe, but likewise the grampus, the porpoise, the dolphin, the dugong, and some others of comparatively very small size— is the tail, which is not vertical as in most fishes, but level, by which they are able to reach the surface of the water with greater

WONDERFUL POWER IN THE TAIL.

59

facility for the purposes of respiration; and such is the strength of this tail that even the largest whales are able, with its assistance, to force themselves entirely out of the water; and you may easily understand this tremendous force when I tell you that in the large whales the surface of the tail comprises from eighty to one hundred square feet. In length it is only from five to six feet, but in width it measures from eighteen to twenty-six feet.

Providence has given this immense power to serve as a defence as well as a means of propulsion to the huge animal, for the tail is nearly the sole instrument of its protection. With one stroke of it the whale will send a large boat with its crew into the air, and shatter the wood into a thousand pieces. The tail enables the animal to rise in the water by striking a few slight blows with it downwards, when the head is naturally carried in an opposite direction, and when the whale wishes to sink, a few similar strokes with the tail upwards at once serve to bury the head beneath the surface.

Sometimes the animal takes a perpendicular position in the water, with the head downwards, and rearing the tail on high, beats the waves with fearful violence. On these occasions the sea foams for a wide space around, and the lashing is heard at a great distance, like the roar of a tempest. This performance is called by the sailors "lob-tailing."

The head is of enormous size, being about one-third of the entire bulk of the whale, and the lips, nearly twenty feet long in some species, show a cavity large enough to hold a ship's jollyboat and crew; but, as I observed before, the throat is very narrow. It is stated to be no more than an inch and a half in diameter even in a large whale, so that only very small animals can pass through it. The basis of the head consists of the crown-bone, from each side of which descend the immense jaw-bones, from sixteen to twenty feet in length, extending along the mouth in a curved line until they meet and form a kind of crescent.

In the Arctic seas whales find an abundance of food in the shape of animalculæ, several species of marine worms, jelly-fish, crabs, and especially shrimps, which abound in those regions. Sir

60

DESCRIPTION OF THE WHALE.

John Parry relates that joints of meat hung by his crew over the sides of the ship were in a few days picked to the bone by shrimps.

Some species of whales are entirely destitute of teeth, but Nature has provided them with an apparatus of whalebone, for the purpose of straining out of the water the small animals which form their nourishment. There are several hundreds of these plates on each side of the mouth, the whole quantity in that of a large whale sometimes weighing nearly two tons.

The tongue of the whale is a soft thick mass, not extending beyond the back of the mouth. It was formerly considered a great delicacy of the table, and a right of royalty. The sword-fish, an implacable enemy of the whale, has a similar relish for the tongue, and, it is said, leaves the rest of the carcase untouched. The skin of the whale is naked and smooth, with the exception of a few bristles about the jaws, and is covered with an oily fluid, which renders it very slippery; beneath this is a thick layer, from eight to twenty inches, of a fatty substance, called blubber, the most valuable part of the animal, and which yields on boiling nearly its own bulk of thick coarse glutinous oil. It is by this wrapper that Providence enables the whale, a warm-blooded animal, as I told you, to defy the utmost extremity of cold, and to retain a sufficient proportion of heat even under the icy Polar seas. It also serves to make the specific gravity of the body much lighter than it otherwise would be, so as to resist the pressure of the water at the great depths to which the whale descends. Yet it is this warm covering, so essential to the animal itself, that has excited the cupidity and deadly pursuit of man, causing him to brave the most appalling dangers, trusting to the resources of art in the instruments of destruction where brute force alone could never prevail.

To give an idea of the quantity and value of the oil obtained from a Greenland whale of sixty feet in length, it has been stated that the weight of the animal, being seventy tons, would be nearly that of three hundred fat oxen. Of this vast mass the oil of a rich whale comprises about thirty tons, which renders it a valuable capture.