HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN WHALE FISHERY. 97 



white men from the adventurous captors of these cetaceans.* The 

 navigation of tbose waters was then a far different thing from what it 

 at present is. The sea was comparatively unknown ; what charts there 

 were in existence were full of inaccuracies, and the first intimation that 

 many a vessel had that she was sailing on dangerous ground was the 

 splash of tbe breakers close at hand, or the grinding of her keel upon 

 the treacherous rocks. iSJ^or were the dangers of the seas the only risks 

 which they experienced. The natives of many of the numerous groups 

 of islands, with which the Pacific is so thickly studded, were more re- 

 lentless than the waves, more treachei'ous than the reefs, and after the 

 first emotions of surprise and awe the firing of a gun caused among 

 them were over, woe to the ill-fated crew which fell into their clutches. 

 It must be acknowledged that, in far too many cases, their barbarities 

 were perpetrated in revenge for injuries received at the hands of some 

 preceding ship's crew, t but they were not punctillious as to whether 

 the actual culprit was punished or one of his kind — they warred against 

 the race and not individuals. Many vessels carried with them the vari- 

 ous gewgaws which would please the savage eye for the purpose of trad- 

 ing among the islands, and these, in cases where the natives were not 

 sadly overreached, served to excite their cupidity and invite attack. 



So large a portion of our fishing-fleet visited the Pacific that the 

 United States was finally forced, when petition after petition had beea 

 sent to Congress, to send an exploring expedition to those seas, the 

 ostensible purpose of which was to render the navigation of that ocean 

 more secure as well in respect to the dangers of the land as in regard 

 to those of the sea. 



In 1828 four ships were sent from Nantucket to the coast of Zanzibar 



*Hun(lreds of islands in the Pacific Ocean were first made known to civilizatioix and 

 first located upon cbarts by whalemen, and the captains of whale-ships were eagerly 

 consulted when exploring expeditions to these seas were to be undertaken. Wilkes 

 and Perry both were indebted to these hardy, adventurous mariners, and in the com- 

 pilation of his great work on '"Ocean .Currents," Maury was in constant communica- 

 tion with them. That these favors reacted to the benefit of our whalemen is true ; : 

 thus in December, 1S58, Professor Agassiz, in a letter to the American Geographical 

 Society, encouraged the Polar expedition then agitated in the following words : " I 

 beg to add a word with regard to Dr. Hayes' Expedition, — I consider it as highly im- 

 portant, not only in a scientific point of view, but particularly so for the interests of 

 the whale fisheries." He considered the habits of the whale as sure evidence of an , 

 open sea, " and the discovery of a passage into that open water which would render 

 whale-fishing possible during the winter, would be one of the most important results 

 for the improvement of whale-fishiug." 



tThns Davis mentions (Nimrod of the Sea, p. 343) speaking a ship from London 

 which had put in to the Marquesas I lands. While there three of the crew deserted. . 

 The captain of the English ship demanded of the chief that he return the deserters ■ 

 under reprisal, which demand was refused. Thereupon the master of the whaleman 

 double-shotted his nine-pound guns, fired a round into the midst of the crowded grass 

 huts' composing the village, and carried off three of the Marquesans. ''We Chris- 

 tians," continues Davis, " must not be unduly shocked when we hear of retaliation by 

 7 



