The Whale's Peace Principles. Gentleness of Temper. CHAPTER VII. THE WHALE'S BIOGRAPHY AND INCIDENTS IN THE CAPTURE. The whale he shall still be dear to me, For the student's book, and his favorite nook, Are illumined by aid of him. From none of his tribe could we e'er imbibe So useful, so blessed a thing. Then hand in hand we'll go on the land, To hail him the Ocean King.-Sailor's Song. IN continuing our inquiries into the peculiari ties of whales and incidents of whaling, it is to be remarked of the great right whale (Balæna Mysticetus), that, like the hugest of all land animals, its disposition is mild and inoffensive. It never shows fight except when wounded, and then in an awkward and blind way, that proves it is not used to war either offensive or defensive. Its immediate recourse is to flight, except when it has young to look out for, and then it is bold as a lion, and manifests an affection which is itself truly affecting. It grazes quietly through the great deep, never The Creator's Wisdom. Care for their Young. using its prodigious strength to seize or lord it over other inhabitants of the seas, but strains its insect-like food through its admirably contrived apparatus of bone and hair, that strikingly evinces His beneficence and wise design, Whose creating hand Nothing imperfect or deficient left Of all that he created. It makes one think of the couplet we used to read, when boys, in the New England Primer: Whales in the sea. God's voice obey. Even the mute fish that swim the flood, I have heard of one of these whales with a cub, when driven into shoal water, being seen to swim around its young, and sometimes to embrace it with her fins, and roll over with it in the waves, evincing the tenderest maternal solicitude. Then, as if aware of the impending peril of her inexperienced offspring, as the boat drew near, she would run round her calf in decreasing circles, and try to decoy it seaward, showing the utmost uneasiness and anxiety. Reckoning well that, the calf once struck, the dam would never desert it, the only care of the harpooner was to get near enough to bury An Affecting Instance of Maternal Solicitude in a Whale. his tremendous weapon deep in its ribs, which was no sooner done than the poor animal darted away with its anxious dam, taking out a hundred fathoms of line. It was but a little time, however, before, being checked, and the barb lacerating its vitals, it turned on its back, and, displaying its white belly on the surface of the water, it floated a motionless corpse. The huge dam, with an affecting maternal instinct more powerful than reason, never quitted the body till a cruel harpoon entered her own sides; then, with a single tap of her tail, she cut in two one of the boats, and took to flight, but returned soon, exhausted with loss of blood, to die by her calf, evidently, in her last moments, more occupied with the preservation of her young than of herself. The habits and living of the sperm whale are quite as different from those of the right as is its structure. Its head is enormously large and unshapely, and furnished with an immense under jaw, that is armed with two rows of mammoth teeth, forty-eight and fifty-four in number. It seizes its prey with these teeth, having no whalebone sieve or strainer, like what has been already described in the right whale, Sperm Whale Disgorging. Sperm Whale Feeding. and it is supported principally by the squid, otherwise called cuttle-fish, or Sepia Octopus, of which one sperm whale that we have lately captured disgorged pieces as long as the whale boat, before going into its flurry. From what I have observed myself and have been told by others, it appears that when this whale is inclined to feed, he goes to a certain depth below the surface, and there remains in an oblique position, as quiet as possible, opening his vast elongated mouth like a great bagnet, until the lower jaw hangs down perpendicularly, or at right angles with the body. The roof of his mouth, the tongue, and especially the teeth, being of a glistening white color, must of course présent a remarkable appearance, which seems to be that which attracts his prey. When a sufficient number of other fish, or quantity of the squid, as the case may be, are within the mouth, he rapidly closes his jaw and swallows the contents. When this creature is fatally struck or killed while in the act of feeding, the whalemen will soon know the items of its last bill of fare; for, while the waters around are purpled with its gore, and a crimson tide is flowing from its H Sperm Whale in Pain. Sperm Whale Dying. spiracles, portions of its lance-lacerated lungs and the contents of its capacious stomach also are being vomited at the mouth. will be lashed by its mighty tail The sea, too, with a sound that may be heard in calm weather for miles like thunder. It is painful to witness the death-agony of any creature, even the smallest that God has given life to, much more that of one in which life is so lively and tenacious, and animating so. vast a bulk. And though it be true what the dramatic poet said, The sense of death is most in apprehension, In corporal sufferance feels a pang As great as when a giant dies, yet I am not one that can coolly observe the last agony of so mighty an organized creature as the whale with as little emotion as some persons feel at the crushing of a reptile or the writhing of a worm; nor do I believe that the suffering in the one case is as great as that in the other. But it is painful enough to see any thing forcibly bereft of the boon of life, the gift of Him that made us all, Who gives its luster to the insect's wing, And wheels his throne upon the rolling worlds, |