42 THE WHALEMAN'S ADVENTURES. 



The decks, meanwhile/ present that lively 

 though dirty spectacle which whalemen love, 

 their faces all begrimed and sooty, and smeared 

 with oil, so that you cannot tell if they be 

 black or white. A farmer's golden harvest in 

 autumn is not a pleasanter sight to him, than 

 it is to a whaler to have his decks and blubber- 

 room " blubber-log," the try- works a-blazing, 

 cooper a-pounding, oil a-flowing, everybody 

 busy and dirty night and day. Donkey-loads 

 of Chilian or Peruvian gold, filing into the 

 custom-house at Valparaiso and Lima, or a 

 stream of Ben ton's yellow-boys flowing up the 

 Mississippi, or bags of the Californian dust 

 riding into San Francisco, have no such 

 charms for him as cutting-in a hundred-barrel 

 whale, and turning out oil by the hogshead. 



The whale now taken proved to be a female 

 or " cow whale," forty-five feet long and twenty- 

 five round, and it was calculated to yield be- 

 tween seventy and eighty barrels of " right 

 whale" oil. This is about the ordinary size 

 of the New Zealand whale, a mere dwarf in 

 comparison with that of the northwest, which 



