Late Noon in the West 259 



days of the settlement of California but these animals were then left 

 alone until two Provincetown whalers who had victualed in the 

 Hawaiian Islands in 1 846 and had empty holds were led to them by 

 a Chinese pilot. This man's name is given simply as Chiang, which is 

 vastly less committal than Smith or even "that man" might be as a 

 definitive name and leaves us somewhat exasperated. We would 

 sorely like to know who he was among that vast clan, where he came 

 from, and how on earth he came to know all about gray whale hunt- 

 ing in the Californian kelp beds; but this he did. There are endless 

 fables about Chinese junks trading with our West Coast Amerindians 

 and even with Aztec Mexico before the fifteenth century, but there 

 is no proper record of the later peaceful Chinese invasion. The result 

 of this Chiang's pilotage is another sad passage in the history of whal- 

 ing, for a not inconsiderable part of the Yankee fleet forthwith took 

 to making an annual side trip to these coasts to slaughter the gray 

 whales. 



Scammon has estimated that about eleven thousand were killed 

 between 1846 and 1875, and during the following twenty years all 

 the rest were taken. Not a single one was seen in 1895. Each yielded 

 about twenty barrels of good oil, and some large ones caught on the 

 southward migration when they were covered with thick blubber 

 gave up to seventy barrels. During the w^hole winter, which included 

 the breeding and mating season, they appeared to eat not at all; their 

 stomachs were invariably empty and their blubber was shrunken to a 

 measly, thin layer of tough oilless hide. Now it has been discovered 

 that they feed during the summer in the Arctic on small crustaceans 

 of a group known as amphipods — those hopping things that look 

 like squashed shrimps which come leaping out from under bundles 

 of damp seaweed lying on sandy beaches. The Japanese call the gray 

 whale by the euphonious name of kokii-kujha. 



The end of the gray whales coincided with the disappearance of 

 the North Pacific black rights, the retreat of the bowheads into the 

 dangerous ice floes of the Arctic, the decline of sperm whales 

 throughout the Pacific, and the general adoption of petroleum as a 

 source of both power and light. And then, as if these blows were not 

 enough to cripple the age-old industry, two more innovations loomed 

 upon the technical horizon — steam and the harpoon gun. These will 

 be described in greater detail later on, as they proved to be the 



