FISHERMAN'S LUCK 147 



New Holland — the New Holland ground was very famous. 

 They cruised through the Mozambique Channel into the Indian 

 Ocean, and through the Indian Ocean to New Zealand and 

 Australia. Then at last round the Cape of Good Hope and 

 through the Atlantic, home. 



These are only two typical cruises, much followed in the days 

 of New Bedford's glory; whether a captain took one or the 

 other of them or still another, was governed largely by his own 

 preferences or those of the owners. 



The physical expansion of whaling to the uttermost parts of 

 the earth did not come suddenly. Although our first whaling 

 fleet to enter the Pacific had rounded the Horn in 1791, it was 

 in 1818 that the whalemen first resorted to the off-shore grounds, 

 whence they brought a report of such promise that within two 

 years half a hundred ships were cruising there. From the off- 

 shore grounds to Japan was a step forward that came in 1820 

 or 1821. It was not until 1838 that whalemen availed them- 

 selves of the abundant supply of whales off the Northwest 

 Coast, not until 1843 that they cruised off Kamchatka and in the 

 Okhotsk Sea, and not until 1848 that they cruised beyond Bering 

 Strait. In the 'fifties and 'sixties, while such cruises as I have 

 outlined above, for both right and sperm whales, were most 

 common, Arctic whaling was pursued by constantly increasing 

 numbers of vessels; in the 'seventies and 'eighties and 'nine- 

 ties it was almost all Arctic whaling, for the long bowhead bone 

 was steadily rising in value. 



In the early 20th Century came the Hudson Bay whaling. 

 For this the whalers went up at the beginning of one summer 

 and stayed until the end of the next, wintering over in a house 

 which they built over the ship when cold weather threatened 

 to overtake them, and in huts which they built on shore. There 

 was whaling in the Atlantic, too, in the first decade of the cen- 

 tury; it even straggled on through the second decade, and the 

 last vestige of old fashioned whaling is in the Atlantic, to-day. 



Now, of course, the why and wherefore of good whaling 

 grounds was a matter of much importance and of much specula- 

 tion among whalers. Even so great an authority as Starbuck 



