164 ALL AFLOAT 



specimens far exceeding any authentic sperms 

 or * rights.' Even the humpbacks and common 

 finbacks, both well known in Canadian waters, 

 occasionally surpass the average size of sperms 

 and * rights.' But the sulphur is probably the 

 only kind of whale which sometimes grows to 

 a hundred feet and more. 



Whaling is done in three different ways : 

 from canoes, from boats sent off by sailing 

 ships, and from steamers direct. The Indians 

 whaled from canoes before the white man 

 came, and a few Indians, Eskimos, and French 

 Canadians are whaling from canoes to-day. 

 Eskimos sometimes attack a large whale in 

 a single canoe, but oftener with a regular 

 flotilla of kayaks, and worry it to death ; as the 

 Indians once did with bark canoes in the Gulf 

 and lower St Lawrence. Modern canoe whal- 

 ing is done from a North-Shore wooden canoe 

 of considerable size and weight with a crew of 

 two men. It is now chiefly carried on by a 

 few French Canadians living along the north 

 shore of the lower St Lawrence. It is not 

 called whaling but porpoise-hunting, from the 

 mistaken idea that the little white whale is a 

 porpoise, instead of the smallest kind of whale, 

 running up to over twenty feet in length. It is 

 dangerous work at best, and a good many men 



