VALUABLE PRODUCTS FROM MAMMALS 27 



sum for those days. The former importance of the whale to northern 

 regions is thus stated: 8 



The flesh of the whale, which resembles coarse beef, is a necessary article of 

 food. It affords a thin, transparent substance which answers the purpose of 

 window glass, and the sinews, when properly separated, are used for thread. 

 The common bones are employed in building the hut, the whalebone in finishing 

 canoes and rude implements, and the remainder is no despicable material for 

 fuel. Besides, the train oil and oleaginous matter of all kinds are more grateful 

 to the taste of the natives than the choicest delicacies to a refined people. 



Geographical science owes a great deal to the voyages of whaling 

 and sealing vessels which sailed uncharted seas and brought back the 

 first information concerning continental bays, inlets, harbors and head- 

 lands, as well as many oceanic islands. History also must acknowledge 

 the influence of these kindred industries which once occupied so large 

 a place in the commerce of nations, though now comparatively un- 

 important. Starbuck says: 9 



In many ports, among hundreds of islands, on many seas, the flag of the country 

 from which they sailed was first displayed from the masthead of a whale ship. 

 Pursuing their avocation wherever a chance presented, the American flag was 

 first unfurled in an English port from the deck of one American whaleman, and 

 the ports of the western coast of South America first beheld the Stars and Stripes 

 shown as the standard of another. It may be safely alleged that but for them the 

 western oceans would much longer have been comparatively unknown, and with 

 equal truth may it be said that whatever of honor or glory the United States may 

 have won in its explorations of these oceans, the necessity for the explorations 

 was a tribute wrung from the government, though not without earnest and con- 

 tinued effort, to the interests of our mariners, who, for years before, had pursued 

 the whale in these uncharted seas, and threaded their way with extremest care 

 among these undescribed islands, reefs and shoals. Into the field opened by 

 them flowed the trade of the civilized world. In their footsteps followed 

 Christianity. They introduced the missionary to new spheres of usefulness, and 

 made his presence tenable. Says a writer in the London Quarterly Review: "The 

 whale industry first opened to Great Britain a beneficial intercourse with the 

 coast of Spanish America ; it led in the sequel to the independence of the Spanish 

 colonies. . . . But for our whalers, we never might have founded our colonies in 

 Van Dieman's Land and Australia or if we had we could not have maintained 

 them in their early stages of danger and privation. Moreover, our intimacy with 

 the Polynesians must be traced to the same source. The whalers were the first 

 that traded in that quarter they prepared the field for the missionaries ; and the 

 same thing is now in progress in New Ireland, New Britain and New Zealand." 

 All that the English fishery has done for Great Britain, the American fishery has 

 done for the United States, and more. 



8 North American Review, xxxvm, 85-114, 1834, reviewing at length some books 

 on whaling by Scoresby. 



' Starbuck, History of the American whale fishery from its earliest inception to 

 the year 1876, Kept. U. S. Fish Comm. for 1875-76, pp. 2-3. 



