144 SrORT IN NORTH AMERICA. 



IX.— THE GIANTS OF LABRADOR. 



I SHALL not be teaching ray readers mucli when I 

 remind them that the whale is tlie largest known 

 animal in creation, and that it is the giant of the 

 sea, just as the elephant is of the land. The right 

 Avhale, the first of the Cetacea, measures from forty- 

 five to a hundi'ed feet in length ; yet certain travel- 

 lers have been guilty of the exaggeration of assigning 

 double these dimensions to individuals seen b}'^ them- 

 selves in distant seas, and upon unknown shores. 

 One hundred feet is, however, a very respectable 

 length, and I prefer to stop at that. 



In the month of February, 1848, three large 

 vessels were moored alongside each other against 

 one of the wharfs on the East River, waiting for the 

 favourable moment when they could quit the bay 

 and set sail for the whale fisher}^. One morning, 

 having nothing better to do, I mounted the rope- 

 ladder which hung over the larboard side of one of 

 them, and with the permission of the captain, who 

 was quietly smoking his pipe on the quarter-deck, I 

 asked a sailor to show me over the interior of the 

 floating-house. 



It was a large three-master, of five hundred tons 

 burden, fitted with care, and evidently intended to 

 brave the roughest weather and the ice-fxoes of 



