380 NIMROD OF THE SEA; OR, 



had taken a right whale on the False Banks which made two 

 hundred and fifty barrels of oil, and whales of even larger 

 size have been taken. Of the bow-head, or Greenland whale, 

 such as is found in the Sea of Okhotsk and Behring Strait, 

 our modern whalemen have taken cows which stowed three 

 hundred barrels of oil, and three thousand pounds of bone, 

 single slabs of which measured seventeen feet in length. 

 Captain Sullivan and Captain Taber, both of New Bedford, 

 speak of bone of the bow-head which measured seventeen 

 feet. 



I should like to convey to the reader some idea of the di- 

 mensions of the creature from which such bone is taken. 

 To do so is only possible by entering into the details of the 

 various parts, with their sizes, and by comparison with ob- 

 jects familiar to the mind. The blubber, or " blanket," of 

 such a whale would carpet a room twenty-two yards long, 

 and nine yards wide, averaging half a yard in thickness. 

 You good, loving housewives, think of such a blanket-piece 

 for the dark, cold nights of winter ! And you farmer boys, 

 set up a saw-log, two feet in diameter and twenty feet in 

 length, for the ridge-pole of the room we propose to build. 

 Then raise it in the air fifteen feet, and support it with pieces 

 of timber seventeen feet long, spread, say nine feet. This 

 will make a room nine feet wide at the bottom, two feet 

 wide at the peak, and twenty feet long, and will convey an 

 idea of the upper jaw as shown in the longitudinal and trans- 

 verse sections of the head in the illustrations, pp. 370, 373; 

 h will represent the complete room, a being the saw-log, and 

 g g the slanting supports composed of bone, which in a large 

 whale will weigh three thousand pounds. Now refer to the 

 illustrations again, and you will perceive that the wall of 

 bone is clasped by the white blubbery lips, b b, which at the 

 bottom are four feet thick, tapering to a blunt edge, where 

 they fit into a rebate sunk in the upper jaw. The throat, d, 



