THE WHALEMAN ASHORE 87 



Usually, too, there were letters from other vessels which had 

 crossed their homeward path. 



These events, however old in time, were fresh and vivid 

 to the listeners. For mid-century whaling news traveled with 

 a slowness unimagined in an age which uses the telegraph, 

 cable, and radio. Letters were received only at long and ir- 

 regular intervals, and then, often, as the result of chance or 

 coincidence. The general rule was to send a letter by every 

 vessel sailing from nearby ports for the general part of the 

 world in which friends or relatives were believed to be cruis- 

 ing. Letter-bags were kept in the leading stores or counting- 

 rooms, and the contents despatched whenever opportunity of- 

 fered. The men at sea, in turn, forwarded messages by every 

 vessel which seemed likely to arrive at home before they them- 

 selves could do so. Outgoing mail was transferred from one 

 whaler to any other which might be more likely to meet the 

 addressees J and homeward-bound letters were passed from 

 captain to captain until at length they came into the hands of 

 one whose vessel was bursting with oil, who had thrown over- 

 board his brick try-works, and who was bending all sail for 

 Buzzard's Bay or for Long Island Sound. 



The quaintest and crudest of post-offices, consisting of a 

 large covered shell, was established on one of the Galapagos 

 Islands. Here passing vessels left mail to be taken aboard by 

 other craft bound for still more distant parts of the world, and 

 took away packets of letters which they might be able to de- 

 liver, or, with luck, found messages addressed to members of 

 their own crews. The volume of business transacted by this 

 uninhabited mail transfer spot was great enough to make it a 

 favorite point of call for American whalers. 



But in spite of (or perhaps because of) such an informal and 

 necessarily irregular scheme of mail delivery, a large percent- 

 age of all letters were hopelessly delayed or went astray en- 

 tirely. Not until October did the first news of the previous 

 summer's Arctic whaling reach the Atlantic seaboard, and then 

 only because of a few early arrivals at the "Islands" (Hawaii). 

 In November further information became available j but it 

 was not until December or January that definite reports from 



