254 WHALES AND DOLPHINS 



the Indians in the neighbourhood of Vancouvei and yueen 

 Charlotte's Islands, and by the Eskimos in the Arctic, who 

 chased it in canoes, using hand harpoons and lances The 

 Americans, employing bomb-lances and a type of harpoon gun 

 in addition to ordinary hand harpoons, made a great slaughter 

 of the animals over a number of seasons. Various modifica- 

 tions in the method of approach had to be adopted as the whales 

 became more and more wary. At first the ordinary whale 

 boats were used, but later very small boats, each having one 

 man to row and another to shoot, were sent shorewards from 

 the whaling ships to harpoon the whales in shallow water. 

 Boats provided with sails and making use of the strong 

 northerly winds were at times used to overtake and harpoon 

 the animals on their way southward ; this method was known 

 as " sailing them down " Sometimes the calves were har- 

 pooned first and hauled to land so that the bereaved parent 

 animal, following close inshore, could be shot at from the beach. 

 When shore whaling was first established it was estimated, 

 according to Scammon, that on the California coast about a 

 thousand whales passed southward daily from December 15th 

 to February 1st. This was in 1851, but by the time that 

 Scammon's account was written in 1874, the average number 

 seen from the stations passing daily did not exceed 40. This 

 author predicted that " ere long it may be questioned whether 

 this mammal will not be numbered among the extinct species 

 of the Pacific ", and so nearly did this become the case that 

 before R. C. Andrews went to one of the whaling stations in 

 Korea in 1911-12 many naturalists, as he himself pointed out, 

 believed the Grey Whale to be extinct. He found, however, 

 that it was still considerably fished by the Japanese, and it is 

 an interesting fact that there are early nineteenth century 

 Japanese illustrations of whaling which indicate that this 

 species, in addition to the Right and the Humpback, had been 

 hunted in that region more than a hundred years ago. 



Sir Sidney Harmer, in his 'History of Whaling', draws 

 attention to more recent captures of Rhachianectes ; in the 

 1925-26 season 42 were caught at Magdalena Bay, Lower 

 California, and 11 off Japan and Korea. He states with 

 reference to the far eastern fishery, " It is the general opinion 

 of Japanese whalers that the industry is declining, and that 



