THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN. 25 



CHAPTER II. 



Uneventful Passage. Captain's Inaugural. Mast-head and Place in Boat. 

 Discipline in Boats, and first Whale raised. Awkwardness of Crew, 

 and Whale lost. Music and Song a Necessity. Hinton, the Nightin- 

 gale. The Yarn as Mental Food. Forecastle Philosophy. Burrows's 

 Theory of the Gulf Stream. Whales pass under the Isthmus of Da- 

 rien. Ben Coffin. His Idea of Luxury. 



THE whale -killing historian and poet, Obed Macy, says 

 very truly, that" The sea to mariners is but a highway : to 

 the whaler it is his field of harvest; it is the home of his 

 business." The passage, or voyage, to the harvest-field oc- 

 cupies little of the mind of the whaling man ; it is to the 

 harvest - field itself that his thoughts turn. Green hands, 

 women, and men-of-war's men may find material for a jour- 

 nal and a book, mayhap, in the incidents of travels about the 

 blue sea. But the whaleman steps on board his full ship, 

 bound home from Behring Strait, and battered and rusty 

 from a four years' cruise, with the expectation of no more 

 noteworthy incidents than a tired bank-clerk might encount- 

 er in a voyage from the Chestnut Street wharf, Philadelphia, 

 to Camden, via Smith Island Canal. I was verdant, and 

 the old journal was well filled before we reached the Brazil 

 Banks, via the Cape Verds, which we sighted and passed. 

 The notes taken were mainly personal, however, and imma- 

 terial to this history, except, perhaps, one referring to the 

 captain's inaugural speech. In this speech there was the 

 stereotyped bluster, threat, and insult deemed necessary to 

 place the captain and officers in their proper places, and to 

 put the crew in sailing trim. We were duly informed that 



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