WHITE WHALES IN CONFINEMENT. ^67 



Tlie good old man is tlie head of that colony and keeps everything 

 straight. In 1863 there was an epidemic of indifference to the 

 Church, and the men went to the bad, got drunk, fought, fished on 

 Sundays, and reviled the priest, withholding all dues to him. Then 

 he said, ' God is angry with you, and to punish you will send no 

 more marsouin until you repent.' They laughed at him, and for 

 three years no marsouin came to them, and they were very poor. 

 They went to the father on a Christmas day and implored him to 

 intercede for them, and he did. The next spring there was a great 

 catch of marsouin, and the men have remained faithful since. 



" The tides here rise and fall some twenty feet, and the whales 

 are trapped in an inclosure made of poles, the entrance to which is 

 closed when a school enters. The pound is about a mile square, and 

 is made of slim poles put two feet apart, space enough to let a whale 

 through, but they will not attempt it. The tide falls and leaves 

 them on the mud, quaking with fear. When we want live ones the 

 boxes are made, padded with seaweed, shoved out over the mud, 

 tipped on one side, and the whale rolled into it, where its struggles 

 soon put it on an even keel, and then it gives up and does nothing but 

 breathe as the boxes are taken on board a schooner for Quebec." 



I was fortunate in getting the above story from Luke Tilden, 

 for a few weeks afterward he died in the aquarium; and Zach. Coup 

 Avould tell nothing that could be relied on, not even to the locality 

 where the whales were caught. 



The white whale is the only one of its tribe that can be captured 

 in the manner related, because of its cowardly timidity. The harbor 

 porpoise, or " herring-hog," would jump nets and break barricades 

 or die. It would not bear the confinement of an aquarium, for it 

 would leap out of the tanks or dash its brains out in trying to do 

 so ; but, once placed in a tank of either salt or fresh water, the white 

 whale starts to circle it, always to the left, with the sun, and con- 

 tentedly blows at intervals of from five to fifteen minutes, and seems 

 as contented as a canary bird in its cage. 



The whale does not always swim in circles to the left when free, 

 and why it does so in confinement is a question. I merely assert the 

 fact. Perhaps wiser men know why perfectly still water in a wash- 

 bowl will rotate to the left with an accelerated motion when the 

 plug is withdrawn, but I do not. As the motion to the left is in- 

 variable there must be a rule for it, but, granting that this motion has 

 some relation to the motion of the earth, the question of how this 

 affects the voluntary movements of an animal remains to be answered. 

 I have watched over a dozen white whales in captivity, dumped into 

 tanks from the most convenient side without regard to the direction 

 of their heads, and every one turned and circled to the left. The 



