WHALERS AND WHALING. 



The hulls of some of these old Whalers are painted in imitation 

 of a man-of-war, with square black spaces on a white ground which, at a 

 distance give exactly the effect of the ports where the guns poke through. 

 This was done as a protection in time of war, so that other vessels 

 would be shy of attacking them. 



The whaling industry received a terrible blow from the discovery 

 of petroleum which has taken the place of whale oil in Commerce, the 

 latter being now used only for lubricating purposes. On the New Bed- 

 ford wharves today there are barrels and barrels of it waiting for a favor- 

 able market, carefully protected from the weather by masses of dried 

 seaweed packed closely around them, very much as they pack excelsior 

 around china. 



Whaling is kept up nowadays on account of the bone, which 

 commands very high prices as it becomes more and more scarce. (It 

 is worth three dollars per pound, and has gone as high as six.) No- 



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