52 HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES, 



follow, and stood idly at a distance. Only about seven row-boats were now engaged in he hunt, 

 the others having retired from it, among the few which still followed being that laid hands upon 

 by the News and Courier deputation . The fish turned and went down Hog Island Channel, the 

 oarsmen pulling steadily and cheerily after him. 



"Talk of sport! What sport is comparable with the rush through the water after such huge 

 game as this, when tired muscles forget their weariness and are endowed with fresh life at every 

 sight of the great head and every splash of the monster's body ? 'Give away ! Give away with a 

 will." And with oars going, the gunwales parting the smooth water, which seemed to rush by, and 

 every nerve and sinew tense and firm, the chase followed, no one knowing fatigue or stopping to 

 measure distances in such a hunt. At last the boats huddle together, and spread again in a circle 

 as the fish is caught up with. A moment and he appears, and in thai moment a long-boat shoots 

 by his side, and the man in the bow, cool and steady, and with a deliberation that looks cruel, 

 plunges his lance into the mountain of flesh, while the oars are backed with a rush and surge, and 

 the craft glides away. Again and again this is repeated, the boats moving in a continual semi- 

 circle, hemming the great fish in, and forming a barrier, which he could burst like pack-thread if 

 he knew it, to the deep water where his safety and rest lie. Slowly he works out, tacking this 

 way and that, and getting the merciless steel upon almost every reappearance. 



" He was evidently weakening this time. His plunges beneath the water were shorter and 

 shorter in duration, and he seemed to gasp for breath as he came up. At last a bare-footed sailor 

 in one of the first two boats, the man who struck the first blow in the morning (Garrison, of North 

 Carolina), drove his lance home. The boat backed away, but there was 110 need for it. An inert 

 black mass lay upon the surface, moving gently with the motion of the water. Dead at last. 



" Then the boats rushed in and clustered around the dead giant. The Royal Arch came up, 

 and from her deck some one fired a rifle-ball into the whale's back. There w-as something like a 

 shudder, a feeble serpeotine motion of the body, and then stillness. This was just at sunset, off 

 Shem Creek, on the east shore, and cheer after cheer arose, the whistle of the tug joining in the 

 triumphal chorus. Lines were quickly made fast about the great body, and it was towed to Sulli- 

 van's Island, where it will remain a part of to-day. 



" The fish is a ' right whale.' As well as could be estimated last night his length is from 40 to 

 50 feet, and the thickness of his body from 10 to 15 feet. His captors estimate that he will yield 

 from $600 to $800 worth of oil. When examined after death the body and sides of the monster 

 were found to be thickly seamed and scarred in every direction with the marks of the lances, 

 harpoons, and hooks, showing that the hunters had aimed well." 



COAST OP CALIFORNIA. 



By DAVID S. JORDAN. 



According to Captain Scammon " shore-whaling was commenced at Monterey, in the year 

 1851, by Captain Davenport, formerly a whaling-master of much experience and enterprise. The 

 whales were pursued in boats from the shore, and when captured were towed to the beach and 

 flensed, much in the same manner, doubtless, as it had been done by our Eew England whalers 

 more than one hundred and fifty years ago. At the point where the enormous carcass was 

 stripped of its fat, arose tbe whaling-station, where try-pots were set in rude furnaces, formed of 

 rocks and clay, and capacious vats were made of planks, to receive the blubber. Large mincing- 

 tubs, with mincing-horses and mincing-knives, cutting- spades, ladles, bailers, skimmers, pikes, and 

 gaffs, with other whaling implements, surrounded the try-works ; and near by, a low structure, 



