50 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 



sperm oil is still valuable. The brig was not 

 merely a blubber-hunter. Her hold was filled 

 with oil tanks which it was hoped would be filled 

 before we got back, but the chief purpose of the 

 voyage was the capture of right and bowhead 

 whales — the great baleen whales of the North. 



As soon as we left Turtle Bay, a lookout for 

 whales was posted. During the day watches, a 

 boatsteerer and a sailor sat on the topsail yard 

 for two hours at a stretch and scanned the sea 

 for spouts. We stood down the coast of Lower 

 California and in a few days, were in the tide- 

 rip which is always running off Cape St. Lucas, 

 where the waters of the Pacific meet a counter- 

 current from the Gulf of California. We 

 rounded Cape St. Lucas and sailed north into 

 the gulf, having a distant view of La Paz, a 

 little town backed by gray mountains. Soon we 

 turned south again, keeping close to the Mexican 

 coast for several days. I never learned how far 

 south we went, but we must have worked pretty 

 well toward the equator, for when we stood out 

 across the Pacific for the Hawaiian Islands, our 

 course was northwesterly. 



