NIMROD OF THE SEA; 



THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN. 



CHAPTER I. 



Stoiy of Ohther and King Alfred. — First Whaling in America. — Work 

 proposed in this History. — My Owner. — The young Candidate. — Papers 

 signed, and we sail. — The first Keef. — Going Aloft. — The Chelsea. — The 

 Crew.— The Outfit.— Pood. 



My Story of whaling, to begin. at the beginning, should 

 tell how King Alfred, of blessed memory, listened to the 

 wondrous stories of whaling told by " Ohther, the Norway 

 man," and how he was so charmed by the recital that he 

 published, for the benefit of his subjects, information to the 

 effect that Ohther "coasted along the country of the Fins 

 (Lapland) until he passed the North Cape, and penetrated 

 the great White Sea — the same which washes the icy barrier 

 of the Arctic Pole — wherein he found great whales of forty- 

 eight and fifty elns in length, the same being so exceedingly 

 numerous and tame that Ohther, with the help of five men, 

 could kill sixty of them in two days." The average English- 

 man is not impulsive, and he slept over the good Alfred's 

 hint for six hundred and ninety-three years, when, in 1593, 

 some English ships made a voyage to Cape Breton for the 

 morse and whale fishery. Such was the beginning of this 

 brave and adventurous business by people who think and 

 speak in our mother-tongue. The same adventurous spirit, 



