RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE 
sible to come at, unless when haply found asleep upon 
the water, or detained by their calves.” 
In another part of his letter, the Hon. Paul Dudley 
states, “Our people formerly used to kill the whale near 
the shore, but now they go off to sea in sloops and whale- 
boats.” “Sometimes,” he says, “the whale is killed 
by a single stroke, and yet at other times she will hold 
the whalemen in play near half a day together with their 
lances, and sometimes they will get away after they have 
been lanced, and spouted thick blood, with irons in them, 
and drugs (drouges) fastened to them, which are thick 
boards about fourteen inches square.” 
But, even after the capture of the sperm whale had 
occasionally been carried on in ships by the descendants 
of the European settlers upon the American shores, who 
struck the whales with the harpoon, having a log of wood 
attached after the Indian fashion, it was a considerable 
time before any great improvement manifested itself in 
their mode of fishing. Presumptuous indeed was he 
deemed who first proposed to chase and capture such 
huge beings in small boats, and by the aid of lines at the 
end of which was attached the harpoon, by which they 
could draw themselves to the harpooned whale when- 
ever they wished to destroy it with the lance. 
An American whaler, who had been bred from his 
boyhood in the service, informed me that his grandfather 
had been employed on a whaling expedition in a small 
vessel off the coast of America, and that, having expe- 
rienced a great deal of ill success in consequence of their 
being unable to capture any whales by means of the log- 
