306 Recreations of a Sportsman 



been chasing these whales about for some time, 

 and now as I looked down from my point of 

 vantage in the bow, I must have been exactly 

 over the whale's tail and the rush and boiling 

 of the water was so terrific, due to its screw-like 

 motion, that the surface was forced up, and with 

 it the bow of the launch several inches on the 

 principle of steaming over a powerful spring. The 

 sulphur-bottom has, in California waters at least, 

 a playful habit of swimming on the surface a 

 while, then sounding by throwing its tail and 

 half of its body into the air. I was well aw r are 

 of this pleasantry, having observed it in the 

 Santa Catalina channel, and one day I saw a 

 sixty- or seventy-foot whale rise and clear the 

 water, standing for a second apparently on its 

 tail. 



Knowing this I could not but wonder what 

 would happen to me if the big fin should come 

 up. That we would have gone up, there could 

 be little doubt. But nothing happened, nor did 

 I get my picture. Later a friendly whale swam 

 for some time alongside of a steamer I was on, 

 the Hermosa, and was photographed, so near 

 that its eye was plainly seen and its puff of hot 

 breath, " spout," caught. Again, I drifted about 

 with Mr. E. L. Doran one day off Santa Cata- 

 lina, trying to photograph the big California 

 gray whale, probably fifty or sixty feet long, 

 but I did not succeed although the animals were 



