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A Huge Northwester.

A Veteran Whaler.

forced trial of hydropathy is, indeed, so common an occurrence, that whalemen make nothing of it.

Those huge northwest whales are more vicious, and less easily approached after they are struck, than the whales of other latitudes. It is considered no disgrace to be run away with by one of those jet-black fellows, found in fortyfive or fifty degrees north; and many an old whaler, who has made his boast that never yet did a whale run off with him, has been compelled to give in beat when fast to one of these "Northwest Tartars."

One captain says he has seen instances of the most wonderful strength and activity in these whales, greater than he ever saw before in either right or sperm. He was once fast to a large cow whale, which was in company with a small one, a full-grown calf. They kept together, and after a time the captain hauled his boat up between them. When they were both within reach, he shoved his lance "into the life" of the cow, at which she threw her flukes and the small part of her body completely over the head of the boat without touching it (although they were half drowned with the water

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He came up alongside of the Boat. and turned it over with his Nose as a Hog would his Eating-trough.

Missing the Mark.

Astride of the Flukes.

she scooped up), and the full weight of the blow, intended for the boat, fell upon the back of the other whale. He sunk immediately, going down bent nearly double, and, the captain thinks, must have been killed by the blow. The same person has seen a stout hickory pole, three inches in diameter and six feet long, broken into four pieces by a blow from a whale's tail, and the pieces sent flying twenty feet in the air, and that, too, when no other resistance was offered than that of the water upon which it floated.

The first whale this man struck there turned him over in two different boats, and afterward "knocked them into kindling wood," while spouting blood in thick clots, and yet this whale lived four hours after, showing its great tenacity of life. He came up alongside the boat, and turned it over with his nose, as a hog would his eating-trough, and then with his flukes deliberately broke it up. Of course the crew had to take to Nature's oars, and they all marvelously escaped unhurt, although one of them was carried sitting upon the whale's flukes several rods, till he slid off unharmed from his strange sea-chariot. This man could say, in

History of Northwest Whaling.

one of the sailor's rude rhymes whom we have

already quoted,

Although he furiously doth us assail,

Thou dost preserve us from all danger free

He cuts our boat in pieces with his tail,

And spills us all at once into the sea.

This northwest cruising ground was first visited in the spring of 1836 by two or three of the Chili whalers, who saw, indeed, numerous whales, but gave it as their opinion that the fishery could never be prosecuted there with any success, by reason of constant and dense fogs. The following year several more of the Chili fleet started to the northward, "between seasons," and, looking further to the north and westward, found better weather, and made a good cruise. During the three years following few ships were found there; but upon the almost entire failure of the southern whale fishery, the right whalemen were forced to turn their prows to those inhospitable seas, and the northwest, as all men know, became a very El Dorado to the intrepid American whalers. This cruising ground extends properly from the thirty-fourth to the fifty-ninth degree of north latitude, and from the coast of America, in west longitude say one hundred and thirty, to the

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