WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 83 



day. 1 Here we consider three in a day for one steamer 

 a big catch. 



Another Government regulation restricts our number of 

 steamers and we are allowed to have only two, so that often 

 it happens, owing to our only having two steamers and both 

 of them being out hunting, our station hands stand idle, 

 but the restrictions put on this new industry by official 

 "experts" at home and in our colonies, who have only 

 recently learned that this whaling exists, make too tearful 

 a subject to insist on here. 



During a summer season, our Shetland station, with only 

 two steamers, may catch from seventy to one hundred. There 

 are any number of whales, but they are becoming every year 

 more wary. Needless to say that a whale, if it is frightened, 

 cannot be approached. The whole of the whale's body is 

 used. The best of the meat is sent to Copenhagen, bought 

 by Danish butchers at the stations for 18s. a barrel, sold at 

 Copenhagen as a delicacy at 9 a barrel. It is very good to 

 eat between beef and veal, but rather better than either. 

 The Japanese pay 25 cents a pound for it, but we use it for 

 fertilising fields. The oil extracted from the blubber, meat 

 and bone, sells now at about 4 a barrel ; six barrels equal, 

 roughly, a ton (2240 lb.). But the value of whale oil is 

 increasing owing to the invention of a "hardening" process 

 by which the oil is turned into white tasteless edible fat 

 excellent for cooking purposes. 



The Right Atlantic whale (Biscayensis), of which we get 

 one or two in the year, is worth 300 to 400, owing to its 

 having good whalebone. What we usually catch, ' c seihvale, ' ' 

 and " finners," have only a little bone in their jaws, worth 

 about 30 per ton. The Greenland Right whale that used to 

 be fished had sometimes a ton of it, which a few years ago was 

 worth from 2000 to 3000. The prices fluctuate consider- 

 ably. When this modern whaling began oil went down 

 10 a ton ; now, even though the production is enormously 

 increased, its value is 24 per ton, and will rise in a year or 

 two very much. 



1 In the South Shetlands Captain Sorrensen, referred to previously, 

 killed ten whales in one day, one was ninety feet in length, and probably 

 weighed ninety tons. 



