HISTORY AND DETAILS OP WHALING. 287 



an aptitude for this particular kind of work, that gives prom- 

 ise of attainment and success in the profession. 



This business, then, we say, holds out many reasonable in- 

 ducements to a young man desirous of engaging in it. With 

 a good common school education, energetic, faithful to himself 

 and his employers, temperate, and withal having a purpose to 

 be something and do something in the world, there are but few 

 paths to honorable respect, character, influence, and pecuniary 

 competence, more inviting than this. 



There are trials, and peculiar ones too, in the whaling ser- 

 vice ; and in what branch of industry are there not ? But 

 making all the allowances for long absences from home, which, 

 without doubt, are the greatest deprivations of all, yet there 

 are other considerations, which, it is believed, counterbalance 

 these disadvantages. 



There are dangers also connected with whaling ; aside from 

 the storms and sufferings which whalemen experience in navi- 

 gating those remote northern seas and oceans, the greatest ex- 

 posure to life is doubtless in the work of whaling. Yet, tak- 

 ing into the account the number of vessels and seamen engaged 

 in this business, the distant places visited by them, and the 

 character of their employment, and we venture the assertion, 

 that there is no department of commercial enterprise, whether 

 coastwise or foreign, that can present a list more free from dis- 

 aster, loss of life, or bad health among seamen, than the whal- 

 ing fleet. 



While varied success attends the labors and deprivations of 

 whalemen, yet, on the whole, we must conclude that the enter- 

 prise is as profitable, and furnishes as strong inducements for 

 the investment of capital, as almost any other. 



There have been partial and individual reverses in the whal- 

 ing business, it is true, and unforeseen contingencies will ever 

 happen ; yet this fact is most obvious and plain to be seen, that 

 from the whole history of whaling in this country, those sea- 

 port places in which the business has been perseveringly carried 



