130 WHALING AND FISHING. 



moin nt to clean quarters, one would loath him- 

 selfreeking as everybody is, with oil. 



It is horrible. Yet old whalemen delight ia it, 

 The fetid smoke is incense to their nostrils. The 

 filthy oil seems to them a glorious representative 

 of prospective dollars and delights. They wallow 

 in blubber, and take a horse -piece for their pillow 

 when lying down. They bake doughnuts and 

 biscuit in the seething oil, and portions of the 

 whale's lean meat are prepared for their daily 

 dinner. I was induced by curiosity to try a piece 

 of nicely cooked whale. The raw meat is of a 

 dark red color, nearly black, and somewhat resem- 

 bling very coarse beef. It is generally minced 

 fine, and fried, after the manner of forcemeat 

 balls. I could not stomach it although our 

 captain declared, with his mouth crammed full, 

 that it was the best thing he had tasted for a long 

 time. 



Three days our trying out lasted. The closing 

 scene was the worst. From the fact that the 

 blubber is torn off the whale's sides, it unavoid- 

 ably happens that occasionally a piece of meat 

 is brought up with the blanket-pieces. This ig 

 known as the "fat-lean," and is carefully stripped 

 from the horse-pieces, and thrown into large open 

 casks, where the heat of the sun and of the 

 adjacent fires gradually drain it cf the oil it 

 contains. This being of an inferior quality, is 

 left to the last day, and by that time the meat .8 



