12 NEW ENGLAND WHALE FISHERY. 



portraiture of the whaleman as seen in the 

 actual pursuit and garb of his perilous occu- 

 pation. Personal narrative and incident, other 

 than what bears directly upon this, are there- 

 fore omitted, together with those minute de- 

 scriptions of whaling implements, outfits, modes, 

 customs, and sea usages to be found elsewhere. 

 Neither does it enter into our purpose to 

 portray a sailor's life and manners in the fore- 

 castle or before the mast, below or aloft, for 

 this is a department of marine literature in 

 which books are so numerous, both in the form 

 of the novel and the sea journal, that little 

 remains to be told. In adventures, however, 

 almost every whaleman's voyage is an original, 

 certainly so to himself. We begin, therefore, 

 at once, with the peculiar lights and shadows 

 of a homeward cruise in the Pacific and Atlan- 

 tic, from the Sandwich Islands to Boston, in 

 the good ship Commodore Preble, Captain 

 Lafayette Ludlow. 



In a voyage of two hundred and thirty- six 

 days there will always be lights and shadows, 

 good and evil, pleasures and displeasures, inter- 



