CHAPTER XV 



REDISCOVERING A SUPPOSEDLY EXTINCT 

 WHALE 



HALF a century ago, on the Pacific coast of 

 America, each year a whale appeared as 

 regularly as the season itself; first in Decem- 

 ber, traveling steadily southward to the warm Cali- 

 fornia lagoons, and again in May heading northward 

 for the ice-filled waters of the Arctic Ocean. It came 

 close inshore, nosing about among the tentacle-like 

 ropes of kelp and sometimes wallowing in the surf 

 which broke among the rocks. 



The Siwash Indians along the coast awaited the 

 coming of this whale with the same eagerness with 

 which the Egyptians hail the rising of the Nile, for 

 to them it meant a time of feasting and of "potlatch." 

 In their frail dug-out canoes they hung about the kelp 

 fields, sending harpoon after harpoon into its great 

 gray body as the animal rose to breathe, until it fin- 

 ally turned belly up and sank. It was a matter of only 

 a day or so then before the barnacle-studded carcass, 

 distended with the gases of decomposition, floated to 

 the surface and was towed to the beach by the watch- 

 ful natives. 



As the years went by, however, the whales became 

 more wary, fewer and fewer coming into the kelp 



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