FISHERIES OF THE PACIFIC COAST. 
79 
the .advance of a foremast hand to $60. I admit that the hoarding-house keepers and 
the shippers get the most of it, but that is not our fault. Then, the hands usually 
come aboard with no outfit, and during the cruise they draw heavily on the slop-chest. 
They’re a sharp lot, and if the catch is small they’ve usually drawn enough out to 
be ahead of the company at the end of the voyage. 
Those who are temperate, brave, ambitious, and quick to learn the 
technicalities of the trade rapidly attain promotion, particularly if 
successful, as subordinate officers, in killing whales. Such men ulti- 
mately rise to responsible positions, as mates or masters, and nowhere 
can there be found those who excel them in hardihood, determined 
bravery, seamanship, and resource in the many trying emergencies inci- 
dent to their calling. Nowhere do men meet with greater peril or 
more trying exigencies, and the training they get in this adventurous 
calling develops the highest qualities of seamanship and fits men not 
only to take a prominent part in this fishery, but to rise to distinction 
in other branches of maritime enterprise. 
Species , seasons , etc. — The species chiefly sought by the San Fran- 
cisco whalemen are the bowhead ( Balcena mysticetus ), the California 
gray ( Rhachianectes glaucus ), the right whale (Balcena japonica), and 
the sperm whale ( Pliyseter macrocephalus\. Occasionally a humpback 
may be captured, and sometimes considerable numbers of walrus are 
killed for their skins and ivory. 
The fishing season of the Arctic fleet is usually from about the first 
of May to the first of October, though the vessels have sometimes stayed 
later, occasionally at fearful sacrifice. In some cases vessels have been 
caught in the ice and had to be abandoned. The fleet usually reaches 
the Gulf of Anadir or vicinity about the first to the middle of May. The 
vessels cruise south of Bering Strait until the ice breaks up sufficiently 
for them to force their way through the strait into the Arctic Ocean. 
This is generally about the first to the middle of June. The whales 
enter the Arctic about the first of the month, and no effort is spared to 
come up with them.* The vessels work along the Asiatic coast in the 
early part of the season, because the “ leads ” are usually most favor- 
* When the whales enter the Arctic they follow up the American shore into the 
northeast as fast as the ice breaks up. They go, nobody knows where, but it is sur- 
mised iuto the great basin at the mouth of the Mackenzie River. But the eastward 
of Point Barrow is a dangerous region ; there may not be a cake of ice in sight, yet a 
sudden change in the wind may bring up the pack in a twinkling. No places of re- 
treat are at hand, for the water is shallow inshore, heuce ships, if caught, would 
most likely be pushed high and dry on the beach. Ships of much draft drag their 
keels in the mud if they go so far to the eastward. One of the greatest dangers in 
Arctic whaling is this going east of Point Barrow. Yet the steamers and many sail- 
ing vessels venture there at every opportunity. Franklin’s Return Reef is the far- 
thest limit, though in 1886 steamers reached Barter Island and aimed at Herschel’s 
Island, 450 miles from Point Barrow. Had they gone there, however, they would have 
been shut in for the winter. (From advance sheets of “Arctic Alaska and Siberia,” 
by Herbert L. Aldrich.) Published in Outing for November, 1$89, 
