Perilous Hunt.

A Boat thrown into a Whale's Mouth.

their thwarts. At the same moment, the boatsteerer let fly his two harpoons into the mammoth body, which rolled over on its back; and before the boat could get clear of danger, being to the windward, a heavy sea struck it and threw them directly into the whale's mouth! All, of course, sprang for their lives, and they had barely time to throw themselves clear of the boat before it was crushed to pieces by those ponderous jaws, and its ejected crew were providentially all picked up by another boat.

Such are the dangers which are continually incurred in the whale fishery, equal almost to those of the field of battle. We often wonder that so many escape with their lives from a battle field; and we equally wonder that, comparatively, so few perish in this most hazardous pursuit. A boat, almost as frail as a bubble, approaches the side of a whale, slumbering upon the ocean, sixty or eighty feet in length, and a harpoon is plunged into his body. His efforts to destroy his tormentors or escape from them, as we have again and again learned, are terrific. The ocean is lashed into foam by blows from his enormous flukes, which would almost dash in the ribs of a man-of-war. Often he rushes at

The Game majestic.

The Whaleman's Lot hard.

the boat with lightning speed and with open jaws, and it is crushed like an egg-shell in his mouth.

In this frightful warfare many are maimed, and many lives are annually lost. But some whales are worth between two and three thousand dollars, and this is majestic game to hunt. He, however, who earns his bread through the perils and hardships of this pursuit, has truly a hard lot in life. He is but a transient visitor at his home. Amid the solitude of the ocean he passes the greater portion of his days; and if he survives the perils of his adventurous pursuit, the storms of the ocean, and the pestilence of different climes, he usually finds that the friends of his youth are all gone, and that he is almost a stranger at his own fireside. And yet this mode of life has its own joys and emoluments, for, if ordinarily successful, in the course of fifteen or twenty years a whaleman will lay up a moderate competence for the rest of his days, and meanwhile, notwithstanding the unfavorable influences which are often at work in the whale ship, many are forming noble characters.

Although it is no genial soil, yet virtue, hu

Who that knows it would go to Sea?

The Life to live.

manity, true nobility, and the fear of God, can live and grow in a whale ship, both fore and aft. I have met them on this present voyage, and in some signal instances elsewhere, which it would be base ingratitude and a denying of God's grace not to acknowledge and give credit for. But who that knows it as I do, would choose a life in a whale ship, or life any where at sea! Who does not rather say, with one that knew whereof he spake,

Eternal ocean! old majestic sea!

Ever I love from shore to look on thee,
And sometimes on thy billowy back to ride,
And sometimes o'er thy summer breast to glide;
But let me live on land, where rivers run,
Where shady trees may screen me from the sun
Where I may feel, secure, the fragrant air;
Where, whate'er toil or wearying pains I bear,
Those Eyes which look away all human ill,
May shed on me their still, sweet, constant light,
And the hearts I love may, day and night,

Be found beside me safe and clustering still.