HUNTING WHITE WHALES 



While I measured and photographed the porpoise 

 I had killed, the other men climbed the rocks to see 

 if they could discover where the school had gone. In 

 about an hour they hurried back to the cove and re- 

 ported that the whales were near the upper end of 

 the island following a tide rip which swung in close 

 to shore. The wind, however, had begun to freshen 

 and blew a perfect gale directly toward the island. 



I was anxious to get some pictures of the white 

 porpoises, but it would have been useless to think of 

 photographing in all that rush of wind and spray, so 

 the four men put off in the canoes while I continued 

 work upon the dead whale. In about three hours 

 they returned, each towing a full-grown porpoise and 

 almost exhausted. It had been hard and dangerous 

 work to kill the whales and bring them in, for the 

 wind drove with tremendous force across the clear 

 stretch of river, catching the tops of the waves and 

 whirling the spray like snow. We stayed at the island 

 for three days, killing two more porpoises and taking 

 the skin, oil, and skeletons. After the blubber had 

 been scraped from the skins they had a value, in the 

 raw state, of about seven dollars, and a considerable 

 amount of oil was obtained from the fat. The skeletons 

 were what I was particularly interested in, and with 

 four in the hold of the yawl and a freshly killed por- 

 poise towing behind, we sailed down the river, past 

 the rocky entrance to the Saguenay, and into the 

 beautiful harbor where three hundred years before 

 the hardy French explorers had dropped anchor and 

 on its shores built the quaint little town of Tadoussac. 



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