322 Reminiscences of 



consult the Encyclopedia Britannica you will ob- 

 serve the instance of one captured, measuring thirty- 

 seven feet in length, which contained thirteen por- 

 poises and fourteen seals, which seem almost incredible. 



Their habitation is principally in the northern and 

 Arctic seas, though found about as far south as Mon- 

 terey. Their usual weight is from three to four tons, 

 and their length twenty-five to thirty feet. Their food 

 is principally of their own genus — warm-blooded an- 

 imals of the sea, porpoises, walruses, seals, sea-lions, 

 etc., — and like the wolves of the land they devour 

 their own wounded kind. They have enormously 

 large mouths, capable of taking in a whole porpoise 

 or seal, and have immensely strong jaws with about 

 forty tusk like teeth, of an inch and a half diameter, 

 and from two to three inches in length, with a double 

 row on the lower jaw. 



They will attack a whale without hesitancy, and 

 tear from the lips and sides slabs of a hundred pounds, 

 and follow to the greatest depth the whale will go. 

 The whale, timid by nature, will flee before them, 

 and when hard pressed will loll out its tongue as a dog 

 will when fatigued. This will be seized by the killer 

 and torn away, and my boatmen — ^both old whalers — 

 related to me two instances, occurring off Monterey 

 Bay, where whales were taken, for what blubber re- 

 mained on their bitten-up carcasses, dying, tongueless, 

 and this was substantiated to me by Michael Noon, a 

 responsible man in charge of the Monterey pier. 



The business of whaling has been carried on for 

 many years from Monterey, by men engaged in it 

 from land stations, who when observing by glasses 

 the blowing of whales off the coast, go out in their 



