Sketches Afloat with the Whalers 283 



heavy hours, the men made many kinds of fancy 

 things for friends at home. The teeth of the 

 sperm whales were saved and carved into picture 

 frames, brackets, and many other devices. Canes 

 were made from the sperm jawbone, from whale- 

 bone, and from the backbones of a shark strung 

 on an iron rod. The heads of these canes were 

 generally carved from teeth of the sperm whale. 

 Strange woods were secured at the islands where 

 the ship called, and these were made into writing- 

 tables, work-stands, work-boxes, etc., and they 

 were often inlaid with tooth ivory and shells 

 and woods of different colors, making designs 

 of striking beauty. Strange fibres were woven 

 into mats and rugs. The tools used by the 

 "scrimshanders," as these workers were called, 

 were usually as rude as those used by the aborigines, 

 but, like the aborigines, the sailors had no end 

 of time, and a look into the parlors of the old- 

 time whalers shows that artists were developed 

 among the men who killed whales for a living; 

 the product of their skill was really the expres- 

 sion of the love they had for the work they were 

 doing. 



