WHALES AND WHALING 



lively weak and are used principally to balance its move- 

 ments. The nostrils are usually placed on the upper 

 part of the head, by which arrangement the whale can 

 breathe without raising the head far above water; the 

 skin is hairless. Whales proper are generally classified 

 as toothless and toothed; the first group including the 

 Rorqual and the Arctic or Right whale ; the second the 

 Cachalot or Sperm whale. 



The whale-fishery dates back to very ancient times. 

 The tales of whaling, as prosecuted by the early American 

 Indians, are not perhaps to be taken seriously ; the tale, 

 for instance, of the intelligent Florida savages, who were 

 wont to spring on the back of the creature, plug up one 

 of his nostrils with a wooden peg, go down to the bottom 

 with him and up again ; hammer another plug into the 

 second nostril and then leave him to suffocate. But of 

 the antiquity of harpooning there can be no doubt. It 

 is said of Leviathian, in the Book of Job, " Canst thou 

 fill his skin with barbed irons, or his head with fish- 

 spears ? " 



And there is certainly no room for doubt as to the 

 ancient Eskimo method, for many of these strange little 

 people still follow the plan with which they are credited 

 in very early chronicles of travel. A flotilla of kayaks 

 surrounds one of these monsters, and the hunters throw 

 harpoons, to which huge bladders made of sealskin are 

 attached. With a few of such spears sticking into it, the 

 poor whale cannot possibly dive (or "sound"), for he 

 is very effectually buoyed to the surface by the bladders, 

 and the Eskimos can slaughter him at their leisure. 



232 



