8 A NATURALIST IN BRAZIL. 
whalers say that they resort to the islands and reefs for pro- 
tection. The males are not so numerous, nor are they so 
valuable to the whaler. I once saw a female swimming with 
its calf.. The latter swam close alongside its mother, follow- 
ing all the motions of the latter, and coming up to breathe 
at the same moment. The whalers all told me that the 
female holds out her fin obliquely, and that the little one 
swims with its head between it and the body. They denied 
that this whale ever clasped the young under the fin. This 
species is very lively and difficult to catch, notwithstanding 
which a small fleet of boats stationed at Caravellas captures 
every year some thirty to seventy whales, which afford a large 
quantity of oil. These two fisheries, that of the Garoupa 
and whale, deserve attention on the part of American fisher- 
men, as they might be developed so as to become very 
profitable. The whales leave the coast in the latter part of 
September or in the early part of October. They occur 
also all along -the Brazilian coast, but Bahia is the only other 
place at which they are systematically fished. Considerable 
numbers are caught here every year, and, during the season, 
one may sit at his breakfast at the restaurant in the hotel in — 
the upper town, and watch the pursuit and capture of one 
of these monsters in the bay, almost under his very window. 
It has long been known that the waters of the Abrolhos 
and vicinity were made very dangerous to navigation by ex- 
tensive reefs, which covered large areas just outside of the 
islands, as well as between them and the main-land. In the 
descriptions of the Brazilian coast in the various «Coast 
Pilots,” both English and foreign, that I have seen, very 
conflicting statements are made with reference to these reefs, 
some saying that they are composed of coral, others of de- 
composed gneiss; and the different kinds of reefs are con- 
fusedly described, so that it is not easy to distinguish, from 
these descriptions, reefs of rock, reefs of coral, or solidified 
hes, like that of Pernambuco, which last, being separated 
from the land by the washing away of the loose sand of the — 


