THE WHALEBONE WHALES OF THE WESTERN NORTH ATLANTIC. 33 



countered. TLe ships which were to make this voj-age assembled in the harbor of 

 Monterey, from which they started for Cape Mendocino, January 3, 1603. Tlie 

 resources of the Monterey region are described and among otliei- things are men- 

 tioned "seals, very large, and many whales.'" 



Alaska was discovered by Vitus Bering in 1740, and in the account of tlie 

 memoiable and ill-starred expedition wliich Steller has given us we find several 

 lefei'ences to whales, the first, so far as I know, for that [)art of America. After 

 the landfall at Mt. St. Elias in July, 1740, Bering steered northward and en- 

 countered the peninsula of Aliaska and the Aleutian Islands. It was while thread- 

 ing their way through this archipelago that the voyagers noticed tlie larger 

 cetaceans. 



Steller first remarks on them as follows : 



"From the 20th to the 23d [of August, 1740] we tacked along the Parallel of 

 53°. I now saw whales very numerous, not singly any moie, but in pairs, and 

 travelling in p:iirs with and behind one another and following one another, which 

 pi'ovoked in me the thought that this must be the time fixed for their rut."~ 



This observation appears to have been made when the vessel was between the 

 Aleutian and the Shumagin Islands. A little later Steller remarks again : 



"The wind was favorable for us so that toward 2 o'clock in the afternoon 

 [Sept. 6, 1740] we lost sight of the mainland and islands. But the numerous 

 whales which accompanied us, one of which thrust more than half its length up- 

 I'ight out of the sea, made us understand that a storm was brewing."^ 



"The 13tli of September [1740] was a bright day. . . . Moreover, many 

 whales were seen playing and we ex[)ected nothing good." * 



' ToRQUEMADA, Monarcliia Indiana, i, 1723, p. 717. 



' Steller, G. VV., Reise von Kamtschatka nach Ainerika, 1793, p. 42. 



' Oj>. cit., p. 76. 



* Op. cU., p. 78. 



