/armor's jlWtijlg Iftsitot: 



COJVDLCTED BY ISAAC UILL. 



"THOm WHO L,fl..R IV THE EARTH ABE THE CHOSEN PEOPLE OF GoD, WHOSE BREASTS HE HAS MADE HIS PECULIAR DEPOSIT 



E FOB SUBSTANTIAL AND GENUINE t IRTUE."— Jtjf,r.<un. 



VOL. 11. NO. 9. 



CONCORD, N. H., SEPTEMBER 30, 1849. 



WHOLE NO. 129. 



THE FARMER'S MONTHLY VISITOR, 

 PUBLISHED DY 



JOHN F. BROWN, 



ISSUED ON THE LAST DAT OF EVERV MO.M'H, 



At Ayer's Block, Concord, If. II. 



55"0' -,w \,.i:vts John Marsh, 77 Washii gti n St. 



'.'I.i -.. C .ET, Keesp. & Mill, 191 RronAWa] . New 



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Scenes at Sea. 



letter from a whale-ship. 



New Zealand Cruising Ground. ) 

 Pacific Oce.ni, lat. 46 S. Ion. 160 \V. 5 

 For 1 1 io first time, on our now ten weeks' pas- 

 sage from iliu Sandwich Islands, we heard day 

 before yesterday, from the topmast head, thai 

 electrify ing, life-giving sound to ;i whaler, 

 ."There she blows.'' The usual question and 

 orders frorrl tlie deck quickly foMowetT": "How 

 . far off?" "Keep your eye' on' fieri" "Sing out 

 when we head r%bt." f tinned out tfiat three 

 whales were descried from aloft in different 

 parts, and in a sliort tinie, when we were deem- 

 ed near enough, tlie captain gave orders to 

 "stand by mid lower" for one a little more than 

 half a mile to the windward. Three bonts'cfews 

 pulled merrily away, glad of something to stir 

 their blood, and with eager hope to obtain the 

 oil) material wherewith to fill their ship. The 

 whale was going leisurely to windward, blow ma 

 K every now and again two or three times, then 

 "turning tail," " up flukes," and sinking. Tlie 

 boats "headed " after him, keeping a distance of 

 nearly one-quarter of a mile from each other, to 

 scatter (as it is called) their chances. 



Fortunately, as the oarsmen were " hove up," 

 that is, had their oars apeak, about the phice 

 where they expected the whale would next ap- 

 pear, the huge creature rose hard by to the cap- 

 ' lam's boat, anil all the haipooner in the bow had 

 lo do was to plunge his two cold irons, which 

 •are always secured to one tow line, into the 

 monster's blubber sides. This he (lid so well, as 

 to hit the "fish's life" at ouee, and make him 

 spout blood forthwith. It was the first notice 

 the poor fellow had of the proximity of his pow- 

 erful captors, and the sudden piercing of the 

 barbed harpoons to his very vitals, made him 

 caper ami run most furiously. Tlie boat spun 

 after bim with almost the swiftness of a top — 

 diving through the seas, ami tossing the spray, 

 and then lying still while tine whale sonucl.il, for 

 the space of an hour — during Which time aaolii- 

 er boat " not fust " to bim with its harpoons, and 

 the captain's cruel lance hail several times struck 

 bis vitals. He was killed, as whalemen call it — 

 .that is, mortally wounded — an hour bel'ore be 

 went into his "flurry "and was really dead, or 

 turned up on his back. 



The loose boat then came to the ship for a 

 hawser to fasten round his flukes, which being 

 done, the captain left his irons in the carcase, 

 and pulled for the ship, in order to beat to wind- 

 ward, and after getting along side, to "cut him 

 in." This clonp, and the mammoth carcase se- 

 cured by a chain to the ship, they proceeded 10 

 reeve the huge blocks that arc always made fast [a 



for the purpose to the fore and mainmast head, 

 and to fasten the tackle. The captain anil two 

 mates then went over the sides on steps will se- 

 cured, and having each a breast-rope to slcailv 

 tliem and lean upon. The cooper then passed 

 them the long-handled spades, which he was 

 all the time grinding anil whetting ;,nd the\ 

 fell lustily to work Shopping off the blubber. 



First came one of the huge lips, which, alter 

 they had nearly severed close to the creature's 

 eye, was hooked into by what they call a blubber 

 hook, stripped oil) ami hoisted on board by the 

 windlass. It was exceedingly compact and 

 dense, and covered with barnacles. Next came 

 one of the fore-fins, alter that the other lip, and 

 then the upper jaw, along with all that peculiar 

 substance called whalebone, through which the 

 animal strains his food. It is all fringed with 

 coarse hair, that detains the little shrimps ami 

 small fry on which the creature feeds. The 

 hones, or slabs of bone, radiate in leaves that lie 

 edgewise to the mouth, from each side of what 

 may he called the ridge-pole of the mouth's 

 roof, forming a house almost big enough for a 

 man to stand up in. 



Next came a lower jaw and throat, together 

 with the tongue, which latter alone must have 

 weighed fifteen hundred or two thousand lbs.; 

 an enormous mass of fat. not, however, so firm 

 and tough as tlie blubber. Whalers often have 

 to lose it, especially from the north-west whale, 

 it being impossible to get it upon deck detached 

 and alone, because it would not hold, and it is 

 generally too large and heavy to raise along with 

 the throat. 



After this was hoisted in, the rest of the way 

 was plain sailing, tin- blubber of the body being 

 cut and pulled off in huge, unbroken strips, as 

 the carcase rolled over and over, then hooked 

 into by the great blubber hooks, and hoisted in 

 by the men all the time heaving at the windlass. 

 As often as a piece, nearly reaching to the top of 

 the main-mast, was got over the deck, thev 

 would attack it with great boarding knives, and 

 culling a hole in it at a place nearly even with 

 the deck, thrust in the strap ami toggle of the 

 "cutting block," that they might still have a 

 purchase on the carcase below. Then they 

 would sever the huge piece from the rest, and 

 lower it down into the "blubber room," between 

 decks, where two men had as much as they 

 could do to cut it into six or eight pound 

 I'leers, ,-,,,(! sWvi it away. It was from nine to 

 eleven inches thick, and looked like very large 

 fat pork slightly colored with saltpetre. 



The magnificent swan-like albatrosses were 

 round us by hundreds, easily seizing and fight- 

 ing for every bit and fragment that fell off into 

 the water, swallowing it with the most carnivo- 

 rous avidity, and a low, avaricious greed of de- 

 l i fi Lit, that detracted considerably ('mm one's ad- 

 miration of this most superb of birds ; just as 

 your veneration for one whom the coloring of a 

 youthful imagination has made a little more 

 than human, is not a little abated by finding him 

 subject to the necessities and passions of poor 

 human nature. Gnnies, tiukards, horse-birds, 

 buglets, p,||| s and petrels, hail all many a pood 

 piorsel of blubber. For at any time in these 

 seas, though eight hundred or a thousand miles 

 from shore, the capture of a whale will allure 

 thousands of sea birds from far and mar. 

 Sharks, too, appeared to claim their share ; but 

 it was not until after a man had been down tw ice 

 on the wave-washed carcase, to get a rope fast 

 to a hole in the w bale's In ad, or I should have 

 trembled for his |< gs. 



Before the blubber was all oft; the huge en- 

 trails of the whale burst out at the wounds made 

 by the spadeo and lances. I hoped the peeled 

 carcase would float, for the benefit of the ponies 

 nd other birds. But no sooner was I lie last 



fold of blubber ofT, and the flukes hoisted in, 

 and the great chain detached, llian it sank 

 plumply down. About the same time two ships 

 bore down to speak to ns, tlie Henry, of Sag 

 il arbor, and the Lowell, of New London. Their 1 

 captain came on board to congratulate „, on ou| . 

 success and "learn the news." They hud just 

 arrived on the ground, and bad not" yet taken 

 any whales. 



Soon after we had finished eutting-in, about 

 eight o'clock in the evening, the wind increased 

 almost to a gale; making it impossible to try out 

 that night. But to-day, while the ship is lying- 

 to, the business has begun in pood earnest"; the 

 blubber-rneti culling up in ihe blubber-room; 

 others pitching it on deck ; others, forking it over 

 to the side of the "try-works;" two men stand- 

 ing by a " horse" with a mincing knife, lo cleave 

 the pieces into many pans lor the more easv 

 trying-out, as the rind'of a joint of pork is cut 

 fur roasting; the hoat-sleerers and one of the 

 mates are pitching it into the kettles, feeding the 

 fires wiih the scraps, and hailing the boiling fluid 

 into copper tanks, from which it is the duty of 

 another to dip into casks. 



The decks present that lively though dirty 

 spectacle which whalemen love, their faces all 

 hegri mined and sooty, ami smeared with oil. A 

 fanner's golden harvest in autumn is not a 

 pleasanter sipht to him than it is lo a whaler to 

 have his decks and blubber-room " blubber-log," 

 ihe Iry-w oiks a blazing, cooper a pounding, oil 

 flowing, every body busy and dirty night and 

 ■ lay. Donkey -loads of Chilian or Peruvian gold, 

 filling into the custom-house at Valparaiso and 

 Lima, or a stream of Benton's yellow-boys flow- 

 ing up the Mississippi, have no such charms for 

 bim, as cutiing-in a hundred-barrel whale, and 

 turning out oil by the hogshead. 



In continuing our inquiiies into the incidents 

 and peculiarities of whales and whaling, it is to 

 be remarked of the great right-w hale (Baltenia 

 in) sticeius) that, like the htigest of all land ani- 

 mals, its disposition is mild and inoffensive. It 

 never shows fight except when wounded, and 

 Ihen in an awkward ami blind way that proves 

 it is not used to war, either offensive or defen- 

 sive. Its immediate recourse is flipht, except 

 when it has young to look out for, and then it 

 is bold as a lion ami manifests .an affection which 

 is itself truly affecting. It grazes quietly through 

 the great deep, never using its prodigious strength 

 to seize or lord it over other inhabitants of the 

 seas, hut strains its insects like food through its 

 admirably-contrived apparatus of bone and hair, 

 that strikingly evinces His beneficence and wise 

 design, 



Whose creating hand 



Nothing imperfect or deficient left 

 Of all that he created. 



It makes one think of the couplet we used to 

 read when boys, in the New England Primer — 



Whales in the sea 



t.od's voice obey. 

 F."en the mute fish that swim the Hood, 

 Leap up and mean tlie praise of God. 



The habits and living of the sperm whale are 

 quite as different from those of the right as its 

 structure, lis head is enormously huge ami un- 

 shapely, furnished with an immense under jaw, 

 that is armed with two rows of mammoth teeth, 

 forty-eight and lifty-four in number. It seizes 

 ils prey with llieso teeth, is without the whale- 

 bone scire or strainer, and is supported princi- 

 pally by the squid, of which one sperm whale 

 thai we have captured disgorged pieces as long 

 as the whale-boat, before going into ils flurry. 

 The last death-struggle of a large whale is 

 sometimes terrific. The sea will be lashed by 

 ils mighty tail wifji a sound that may be heard + 

 for miles like thunder, while the waters around 

 are purpled with its gore, a crimson tide is flow- 



