164 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[March 30, 1883 



Portrait of Mr. Banks. — The very wide circle of warm 

 friends of the late Mr. T. C. Banks will be pleased with the 

 portrait which we give herewith. The drawing was made 

 from a photograph taken at a time when Mr. Banks was in 

 good health, and shows hiin as most of our readers, especialty 

 those in the West, remember him. 



Our Natural History Comtmxs are always open for the 

 record of observations in nature. The amount and value of 

 the information contained in these from year to year, is well 

 illustrated by the book, "Forest and Stream Bird Notes, " 

 which Mi-. H, B. Bailey has compiled, and which has just 

 been issued, 



Back Numbers of Forest and Stream.— Owing to the 

 constantly increasing demand upon us for back numbers of 

 the Forest and Stream, and the. fact that our supply of 

 certain issues is very limited, we shall be obliged to charge, 

 from this time on, twenty-five cents each for numbers more 

 than two and less than four years old, and fifty cents for 

 those more than four yeai s old. 



The Archery and Latcn Tennis News is a monthly publi- 

 cation devoted to the sports named in its title. The editors, 

 Messrs. A. G. Constable, A. S. Brownell and A. H. Gibbes, 

 are well-known authorities in their respective fields; and 

 they certainly succeed in making the News an entertaining 

 and valuable paper for archers and tennis players. They 

 merit a substantial success, and we trust may have it. The 

 address is No. 206 Broadway, New York. $1 per year. 



THE WHALE OF COBB'S ISLAND. 



THE denizens of Cobb's have lately had a sensation beside 

 which the largest wreck overdriven by westward winds 

 upon the banks and shoals sinks into insignificance. It is some- 

 thing that will furnish them food for gossip for nine years to 

 come, an unfailing topic for talk when conversation lags and 

 silence becomes oppressive. Hereafter all dates will be 

 fixed by the occurrence, and years hence the questions and 

 answers will be something like this: 



"Annie Maria, how old is young Elkenny Anderson 

 Kruinp?" 



"Well, I don't know prezactly ; somewhere going on three 

 years, I guess." 



"Oh, 1 remember now. He is three years and six months; 

 born the day before Captain Spady tackled that whale. 

 There's the date on the rafters where'l put it with a piece of 

 charcoal." 



About that same period Albert Cobb goes over the island 

 on business, for he farms on the mainland, and tells the boys 

 that a ship has run ashore on the bar about ten miles away, 

 and proposes for them to go and try to save the cargo. 



"Count me out," growled out old Captain Cornell, "what's 

 the sense of saving it? Them owners is going for to beat us 

 out of our price, and if the crew's safe let her sink." 



" Them's my sentiments exactly," put in Warren Cobb. 

 "I'll be club-haulei fore and aft before I risk my life and 

 work myself to death to save a cargo that won't lie paid for. 

 Here I is, and here I stays. " 



"I swore," said Captain Spady, three years ago, "if I 

 wasn't paid for the last job I'd throw up my hands, burn nay 

 boats, and let them that' owns the cargo save it." 



"How long ago was it that we saved that vessel off Shell 

 Island. " 



" Somew'ars 'bout four years," spoke up one. 

 "Not over three," said another. 



" I'll tell you, boys, it was only four days 'fore Captain 

 Spady tackled that ''ere whale." 



"Lord, Lord! them was rum times," spoke up Nathan 

 Cobb, who was setting in a corner. " It was three years 

 and a leetle over six months ago. How time do fly, " 



The true history of the fight with the great Arctic 

 whale, as near as I can get at it, and as told without contra- 

 diction by the different members of the attacking crew is as 

 follows: 



It seems that about three o'clock one afternoon in the first 

 part of February of this year. Jack Andrews, a resident of 

 the place, was gathering oysters, when, casting his eyes 

 carelessly arouncl, he saw a huge black spot, like the bottom 

 of a long boat turned upside down, on the bar about two 

 miles from the island. He gave the alarm, and Nathan, 

 scanning the object with his field telescope, said with an in- 

 tense excitement that rarely found lodgment in his phlegmatic 

 nature : 



"Boys, it is a big sperm whale stranded on the sand-bar, 

 and is worth a cool thousand if we can capture it." 



The effect was electrical; the island was in an uproar. 

 Tom Spady, who was silting down with a twin, aged two 

 years, on each knee, surveying their features with paternal 

 pride, and trying if he could tell one from another, as soon 

 as he hoard the news jumped to his feet, and the twins fell to 

 the floor and on their heads, but as they inherited their cra- 

 nium from their father — which was the hardest part of the 

 Spadys, old and young— each little chip of the ancient block 

 only sat up a rival solo, which speedily brought Mrs. Spady 

 to the scene. In one swoop she gathered the pair in her lap. 

 " Poor little dears; don't cry, both will be well before youre 

 married;" and she rubbed the bumps. Oh, magical words! 

 that have been used with effect by our grandmothers' great 

 grandmothers. In those simple combination of letters how 

 much cogent puissant power lies hid; infant tears arc dried, 

 infant sobs are checked, and the new tooth just cut is dis- 

 played in an infantile grin. 



"Mr, Spady," indignantly, from the matron, "you 

 ought to be ashamed to treat your own flesh and blood so." 

 " Oh, bother; there's a whale oa the coast." And forget- 

 ting wife, baby and twins, Tom Spady rushed to the wharf. 

 A motley crowd, roused from their "avocations, was there. 

 Bill Johns, just, bolted from a quiet game of draw, held in 

 his paw a full hand, that he hadn't time in his excitement to 

 call and claim the stakes, when the news came, and which 

 he had forgotten to leave behind. On Captain Crump's arm 

 was a long hank of yarn, showing that he had freed helping 

 his spouse. 

 In a few ";. el minifies the large lifeboat was manned by a 



half dozen volunteers, and with Nathan Cobb and Captain 

 Spady as joint commanders, who sat in the bow, the craft 

 was soon speeding towards the place where the whale lay, 

 like the armored back of some deadly Merrimac or iron- 

 plated monitor. 



Now there are three kinds of whales; one the Baleenidm or 

 baleen, of which there are two species, the fin-back and the 

 rorqual whale ; the second JPhyseteridm or sperm whale, and 

 the third the Delphinida which last comprises the grampus, 

 dolphins and porpoises and marwhals. The first two are 

 of vast size, averaging between seventy and eighty feet; 

 their mouths are fifteen to eighteen feet long and from six to 

 eight feet wide, and ten to twelve feet high, presenting a 

 semoid curve when shut. Their ordinary rate of speed is 

 four to five miles an hour. They swim not far beneath the 

 surface, and sometimes threw themselves in sport entirely 

 out of the water. They usually come up every ten minutes, 

 but can remain down half an hour or more. They generally 

 keep on the surf ace about two minutes, during which time 

 they blow eight or nine times and then descend. They feed 

 just below the surface with their mouth wide open. The 

 baleen whale has two blow holes. 



The sperm whale is smaller but is more valuable. Both 

 kinds are found in all seas, but the former are most 

 abundant in the waters of the Pacific and the Arctic Ocean. 

 and especially along the shores of <6pitzbergen. They are 

 very valuable; as much as eighty to ninety barrels of oil 

 being taken from a single individual, besides" the spermaceti 

 which often weighs a ton. In addition is found in the 

 whale that precious perfume known as ambergris, for which 

 wholesale druggists often pay five golden dollars an ounce. 

 This is science and facts, reader, "and though the wreckers 

 didn't know all this, yet their intuition told them that a rich 

 prize lay helpless on the reef, and they determined to get him 

 if they could. And so the willing crew sprung to their oars 

 and made the boat fairly fly through the water. They soon 

 reached him and then they took in the situation "of the 

 captive at a glance. It appeared that the huge baleen, one 

 of the largest of its kind and measuring fully seventy feet, 

 had, in its sportive rush through the ocean, run on a sand 

 bar that projects out from Cobb's Island, or rather encircled 

 it for several miles. Between this bar and the beach there is 

 a narrow tortuous channel of several miles that leads out to 

 the ocean. The whale lay fast aground on the bar, and as 

 an evidence of its vast size it had stranded in twelve feet of 

 water which was measured by Nathan Cobb himself. 



The boat glided to within five feet of the monster of the 

 deep. Only the top of his head and his back was visible, a 

 round, shiny, smooth black surface that was as slick as a 

 dressed hog. A council of war was held. There's your 

 fish; how are you going to get him. Captain Spady spoke 

 up: "Drive two fence rails sharpened at the end down his 

 spout holes and thus suffocate him." 



"My plan," said Nathan Cobb, "is to shoot him. I have 

 my No. 4 ducking gun and No. 1 shot. I think I may kill 

 him by shooting a dozen times in one hole." 



"My plan," said the ancient Captain Cornell — who, by the 

 way, is an old Martha Vineyard sailor, a veteran of many 

 a battle with the seas and uow feeble with age (he spends his 

 winters at Cobb's, duck shooting)— "my plan," he iterated, 

 "is to cut a hole in his back with an axe, and then run a 

 stake clean through him." 



Of course any one reading this will ask why they did not 

 harpoon him. Well, because there was neither lance nor har- 

 poon on the island, nor had any whale, in the memory of 

 man, ever grounded near the island before. So these men 

 had hastily thrown such articles in the boat as they first laid 

 their hands upon ; indeed, they had no time torspare, for 

 the tide, at its lowest ebb when the whale was first discov- 

 ered, now began slowly to rise; and moments are as precious 

 to them as time was to the Iron Duke when the French cui- 

 rassiers and chasseurs came in hammering onsets against 

 his enfeebled line, and he counted each second by a heart 

 throb as lie gazed on the road to the left, hoping to see the 

 head of the Prussian Ziethen's columns appear. 



Unless the whale was killed before the flood tide he was 

 lost. 



Nathan Cobb began the fight. Standing up in the bow of 

 the boat, he put the muzzle of his heavy gun within two 

 feet of the back, and pulled trigger. Two thundering re- 

 ports echoed across the waves. The mighty leviathan of the 

 deep merely waved his tail like a dog when his ears are 

 scratched, or as a cat when its fur is rubbed. Again, again 

 and yet again did Nathan send the buckshot into the nuiss; 

 but the blubber, which was some four feet deep, absorbed 

 the shot, and probably did not worry him any more than a 

 sand fly would a hippopotamus. 



Next Tom Spady's device was attempted. The sharpened 

 stake was thrust in the spout hole, but the united force of 

 three men could not hold it in. One breath of the huge fish 

 was like a blast from a volcano, and mocked the puny 

 strength of man; the stakes would be hurled twenty feet 

 high. Stop his breath! — as well try to stop a woman's 

 tongue, as easy, indeed, for three Lilliputians to attempt to 

 close the nostrils of the mighty Gulliver ! 



"Hurry up, boys!" sang out Cornell; "give it to him with 

 the axe." And the steel sank deep in the blubber that was 

 as soft and white as hog's lard. Like the shot, the stroke 

 only seemed to give pleasure, and the broad tail gently fanned 

 the water. 



"Let's get on top of its back," said the Captain. "I'll fol- 

 low," said Spady r . "I'll risk it," put in Nathan, and "I 

 guess I won't be backed out," said Warren Cobb, gave a hitch 

 to his breeches and took a fresh bite at the plug of tobacco. 

 Bill Johns "allowed that he would go," too, so preparations 

 were made and all hands got ready to board the strange craft, 

 though no boatswain's whistle was heard. But that whale's 

 time hadn't come, and neither of the Cobb's or Spady was 

 fated to play the role of Jonah, for the tide flooding in, had 

 risen a couple of feet, and the great fish floated off and started 

 at a slow, leisurely gait up the channel; the boat getting on 

 the outside, kept: up with him, Nathan blazing away into the 

 moving mass, trying to make him shear off and run into the 

 breakers; but that whale wasn't born yesterday. Contempt- 

 uously ignoring the peppering from Nathan's No. 4 Greener, 

 he pursues his tortuous way, always keeping in the channel 

 as well as the most expert pilot could have done. He didn't 

 seem to lie in a hurry, and made his way like a propeller 

 which has stopped its wheel going, and moves evenly and 

 slowly to its wharf; so calmly, sedately, leisurely the im- 

 mense monarch of the deep reached the kingdom just as the 

 suu dipped below the ocean's rim, and giving a gentle flirt 

 with his tail, he sank out of sight and was seen no more. 

 ********** 

 The third and final scene ends the history of this whale. 

 It is five years hence. In the year 1887, the good ship, The 

 Dancing Sally, from Nantucket, a staunch whaler of 500 



tons, lies off on the coast of the Arctic Ocean. The misty 

 spectral light shows that the night of the polar winter is not 

 far off. It is a calm but intensely cold day, the rigging of 

 the_ ship choked with ice makes spars, masts and ropes look 

 as if they were, manufactured of pure silver. The ocean, of 

 deep_ blue, gleams like steel and reflects with marvelous 

 fidelity the color and outline of the Dancing Sally, that grace- 

 fully rises and falls in the smooth, undulating billows. Afar 

 off, "gleaming in immaculate white profile against the cerulean 

 sky are towering icebergs that take the form of moated castles 

 with turreled towers and postern gate. The suu shining 

 upon it all, makes it gleam with the iridescent hues of opal? 



A whale has been captured after a long chase and the 

 whole ship is in a state of bustling activity."' A dozen men 

 with their cutting spades as sharp as razors are severing the 

 blubber in huge cakes; another dozen are securing the car- 

 cass to the ship by the means of chains. A third detach 

 ment are rigging a derrick from the mast to be used as a 

 crane to hoist up the immense pieces of fat, some thirty or 

 forty feet long, when suddenly all the work is suspended, the 

 busy hands stop, and a half a hundred eyes glance inquir- 

 ingly towards a sailor who,, crushing a handful of blubber 

 between his horny flippers, starts, and then with his eyes 

 protruding from his head, gives a loud hello and looks at the 

 contents of his hand. 



It is a handful of Nathan Cobb's shot! 



"Smash your topligbts, what's the matter'?" roars the skip- 

 per stepping on the platform. 



"May I be blowed," said the whaleman boldiug out his paw 

 with the lead in it, "if somebody hasn't been a'huni ing this 

 ere fish with a shot gun." 



"That's so, " Said the skipper, examining the buckshot. 

 "Shiver my timbers if I can account for it. I have followed 



rmy 



the sea man and boy for forty years and never seed the like 

 before. " 



The cutter scratched his head, while the crew in sympa- 

 thy scratched theirs also. All at once his w T eather-beaten 

 bronze face lighted up and he called : 



"Cap'en!" 



"Avast there, what is it?" 



"What was the craft that was lost somewheres near the 

 North Pole when they were trying to get to the open sea?" 



"The Jeannette you mean, commanded by I)e Long." 



"The same," was the reply. "Now this" here whale must 

 have blowed his flukes close along that ship, and the crew 

 not having her irons handy and being jammed up in the iee- 

 flows, just pulls at him with a gun, dyer see?" 



"That's it Jack, but look ahead; lively, men, and stop that 

 palaver," shouted the skipper, "this carcass will yield ninety 

 barrels of oil and is worth a thousand dollars if its worth a 

 cent. So lively, my lads, pitch in, my hearties. Loft ahoy! 

 keep a sharp lookout, " and then the skipper hummed, as he 

 looked in his pocket for a match, that ancient song of the 

 whaler: 



Jack Darling was a landsman bold, 

 Who would a whaling go, 



Chasseur. 

 Cobb's Island, Ya. 



NOTES FROM SPIRIT LAKE. 



SPBING is spring, ducks and geese have commenced their 

 „ flight. Prairie chickens are very plenty and very fat 

 even now. Should we have a good "season for the chicks, 

 there will be countless numbers for the season's sport. 



We have had a very open winter, some mallards have not 

 left at all; a pair have been in the outlet of my hatching- 

 house all winter. I expect, every day that some vandal will 

 shoot them, but they have escaped so far. 



Parties here are making all possible arrangements for com- 

 ing visitors; buildings have been going up all winter. Hotels 

 are being enlarged, boats are being built. Thousands of dol- 

 lars will be laid out for accommodations for visitors; new 

 men are coming in every day; lots and lands are going up, 

 up; we are having a real "boom." Three railroads will lie 

 in running order to this place by the Fourth of July, 18S2, 

 just in time for the summer rush. 



The sporting here is of the best at present, fishing especi- 

 ally. I was out late last fall about three hours with Gov. Gear, 

 of this State, and a friend of his; we caught one hundred and 

 nine pike, pickerel, perch and bass, could have got more, 

 but our bait ran out. A catch of one hundred pounds a day 

 per man is a common occurrence, and not overdrawn either. 

 But when the fish run in the spring is the time lo see tish; 

 the"stories told about them seem ' 'fishy" to an outsider, but 

 they arc generally truthful. I have seen wagon loads taken 

 out with pitchforks, and hundreds, yes, thousands of pounds 

 thrown out and left to rot. I have 'tried for several sessions 

 of our Legislature to get a stop put to such waste, but our 

 "Solons," I regret to say, have as yet made no laws of much 

 account. "Pis" true some feeble attempt has been made, but 

 what has been done is set. at naught by a good many. 



There is now a hope that some steps will be taken to 

 remedy this evil, but you are well aware that laws amount 

 to but little unless public sentiment goes with them, and 1 

 am glad to say that the people here are awakening, and will, 

 no doubt, take a different course for the future. As yet there 

 is plenty, and if all those interested would put forth an 

 effort, the evil would be stopped, and we could keep up our 

 supply, "a desideratum devoutly to be wished." The 

 water's in our lakes are deep (generally) and pure; West 

 Okoboji has a depth of 170 feet, and is very clear and never 

 roily; it has a shore-line of fifteen or sixteen miles, and is 

 one" of the most beautiful lake* in the West. East Okoboji 

 is long, winding and narrow, and shoalcr, shore-line about 

 eleven miles. This is connected with West Okoboji. Spirit 

 Lake is the largest of the lakes, it averages about 

 twenty-one feet, in depth, and is spherical in shape. There are 

 besides the Gar lakes, which connect with the Okobojis: they 

 are three so called, and like the others, splendid fishing. 

 These lakes, together with Little Spirit, Loon and a host of 

 others over the line in Minnesota, lor a chain of lakes they 

 are all gems set in the emerald prairie, and are the home of 

 various kinds of fur-bearing animals, besides water fowl. 

 This was the ideal of an Indian's paradise, and no wonder 

 they hated to leave it; no wonder their untutored minds 

 looked upon the whites us intruders, for well they knew that 

 upon their a I vent, they would have to go and leave the c 

 beautiful groves and waters, where the hand of nature had 

 provided so bountifully for them, and, sheltered from the 

 summer suns and wintry blasts alike, they could live in 

 peace without, a care for the future. In 1857, all the settlers 

 here were massacred by a roving band of Indians, excepting 

 only two women who, after untold Buffering, were restored to 

 civilization, and I believe are yet living. So Spirit Lake has 

 its history and its legends, and will be remembered in verse 

 and song. A. A. Mosher. 



^Spirit Laee, Iowtt 



