Late Noon in the West 249 



stayed on the farm and the whole business petered out without 

 leaving any outstanding imprint on the world. But while it lasted, 

 this age had a glorious history. 



It is always harder to gain a clear insight into a period of success 

 than into one of failure. When necessity calls, invention results, and 

 when invention is even a little ahead of the times, success can almost 

 be assured. In this case everything was set up just right for the en- 

 terprise. The country was a fast-growing economic child demanding 

 raw materials and new power sources in ever-greater quantities and, 

 thus, it provided an almost ii exhaustible market for oil. The people 

 had a long experience in shipbuilding, had pioneered the routes, and 

 had plenty of trainable man power. The only other whalers — the 

 Hollanders and British — were undermanned, somewhat worn out 

 by wars, and were too hidebound in their ideas. The former had 

 thrown everything into the Arctic and the right whales; the British 

 were still inexperienced, had a comparatively small fleet, and were 

 beset by all sorts of official restrictions. Last, and most important 

 of all, the oceans of the world were then positively swarming with 

 sperm whales, whose numbers had hardly been so much as touched 

 except in the North Atlantic. Every factor was propitious. 



Far too much has already been written about this period of whal- 

 ing history. Whole libraries are devoted to the subject; the logbooks 

 of a large number of the whalers themselves, in which day-to-day 

 accounts of their activities may be studied, are still extant; and al- 

 most everybody, it seems, who can claim any connection with the 

 whaling families of old and a great many who certainly cannot do 

 so appear to have written a book on the subject. Then there are the 

 firsthand reminiscences of every kind of whaleman from captains 

 to part-time deck hands like the famous Melville. This mass of litera- 

 ture is of every quality and varied worth. Quite a lot of it is arrant 

 nonsense and some of it pure fabrication. One might suppose that 

 there is nothing left to say and nothing to be added. Nevertheless, 

 it is extremely hard, if not impossible, to find any single, good, over- 

 all account of this period that both puts it in its proper perspective 

 and at the same time brings to the fore its really salient features. The 

 whole picture is so cluttered with shouts of "Thar she blows," 

 blown-away topgallants, stove-in boats, and the varying prices of 

 whale oil that it becomes well-nigh impossible to ascertain just what 



