CACHELOT EMBAYED. 
353 
his course, and the shores reverberated the sound 
made by the dilated blows he struck upon the sur- 
face with his tail. He coasted the shore as if he 
looked for some outlet he had remembered, but 
which he could not find again ; and some hours elapsed 
before he took ground in that circular convulsive 
sweep, which is described as being made by these 
animals when exhausted, and which whalers call the 
‘ flurry.’ This laid him fast stranded on the shal- 
lows, and rolled upon his side. This capture was 
related to me by General Kayer la Rivierre, the 
Commandant of a neighbouring arrondisement, who 
witnessed it. The Sword-fish was not taken, but 
the body of the stranded animal bore wounds, evi- 
dently inflicted by some such ocean enemy. 
Moreau de St. Meri, in his History and de- 
scription of the old French Colony of St. Domingo, 
relates that in his time (1785), in the months of 
March, April, and May, as many as five and twenty 
vessels from the North American States could be 
seen on the coast off Sale Trou near Jacmel, fishing 
for Cachelot Whales, and, he adds, for Souffleurs 
{Balcenoptera), and that this fishery was with equal 
spirit and success pursued within the gulf to the 
west of the colony ; — that is, within the Bight, 
in which I saw the Cachelot breach. The whale 
fishers resorted to Turk’s-island to boil their oil. 
“ I must not omit to mention that that rejecta- 
mentum of the Spermaceti Whale, ‘ odoriferous 
Ambergris J has been occasionally found on the coasts 
of these and the Bahama Islands, of very considerable 
size and weight. 
