HUMPBACKS. 175 



antil the young leviathan has gained strength 

 sufficient to shift for himself on the broad ocean. 

 These occasions are taken advantage of by whale- 

 men, and great numbers of the old fish are slain 

 annually in the many unfrequented bays of Africa 

 and South America. 



Whalemen assert that the sperm whale mother 

 also approaches the land to give birth to her 

 young, but her haunts have, I believe, never 

 been discovered, and this is, therefore, more a 

 probability gathered from analogy, than an ascer- 

 tained fact. The right whale mother is very care- 

 ful to choose a retired and unfrequented roadstead 

 for the scene of her maternal labors, and bays on 

 the eastern coast of Africa which were formerly 

 noted as the annual resort of great numbers of 

 these animals, have been altogether deserted by 

 them shortly after the whalemen got among them. 

 The humpback, however, the most stupid of 

 whales, clings obstinately to the place it has once 

 chosen, and thus numbers of these fish are annu- 

 ally taken in the great bays of New Holland, 

 Madagascar and Africa. 



"When this species of whale is met with at sea, 

 it is seldom thought worth lowering after, for the 

 reason that it is exceedingly hard to kill, runs to 

 windward at great speed on being struck, and 

 generally sinks when killed. When a dead fish 

 sinks at sea (and this sometimes occurs with right 

 whales as well as hump backs), he is of course 

 lost. In soundings however, the case is different. 



