THE A, OF WHALES 67 



" Big difference. Right whale thinner whale dan 

 a bowhead, ain't got sech thick blubber neither. 

 He's quicker in de water and got nothin' like 

 such long baleen. You ketch right whale in 

 Behring Sea. I ain't never see none in de Arc- 

 tic Ocean. You ketch bowhead both places. 

 Right whale fightin' feesh, too, but he ain't so 

 dangerous as a sperm." 



Let me add that I give this statement of the 

 old whaleman for what it is worth. All books 

 I have ever read on the subject go on the theory 

 that the Greenland or right whale is the same 

 animal as the bowhead. .We lowered for a right 

 whale later in the voyage in Behring Sea. To 

 my untrained eyes, it looked like a bowhead 

 >vhich we encountered every few days while on 

 the Arctic Ocean whaling grounds. But there 

 was no doubt or argument about it among the 

 old whalemen aboard. To them it was a " right 

 whale " and nothing else. Old Gabriel may 

 have known what he was talking about. De- 

 spite the naturalists, whalers certainly make a 

 pronounced distinction. 



By the time Gabriel had imparted all this in- 



