41 
They even established a shipbuilding establishment in Insur¬ 
rection bay, on the eastern shore of Kenay peninsula, and em¬ 
ployed an English superintendent; but as the whaling was not 
so remunerative as the fur trade, them whole efforts were directed 
to the full legitimate development of that business. 
Captain Bryant says that Fairweather ground is, at proper 
seasons, the great receptacle of the mollusk called whale’s food, 
a minute animal about the size of a flax seed, and having: a 
gelatineous consistency; myriads of them cover the ocean like 
a scum. This mollusk drifts along with the coast current toward 
the west at the rate of about one mile per hour. During this 
season the sea and all the adjacent bays are filled with whales. 
The mollusk collects under the lea of the submarine range of 
Pamplona. The whaling season continues from the last of June 
to the middle of July. About Analaska we saw numbers of 
sperm whales in September, and in August the sperm whaler 
4 William Gifford ’ was entering the north strait of Kadiak to fill 
up, reporting as having left the coast of Queen Charlotte’s 
islands, where four other sperm whalers were fishing that season. 
The 4 Gifford ’ had been out from New Bedford since 1863, her 
time being five years. She had sent home 2700 barrels of 
sperm oil, worth $90,000 in gold, and had on board 400 barrels 
more, intending to take nothing but sperm whale until near the 
end of her cruise. For the last six years the whaling fleet of 
the Arctic has averaged not less than eighty vessels, of which 
seventy belonged to the United States. Their average catch in 
those water amounts to not less than 1200 barrels each, and 
about 30,000 pounds of whalebone. The principal reason given 
by the whalers for prefering the Arctic regions over the Gulf of 
Alaska is, the shallower water. . . . The command of all 
the bays and straits of the north-west coast resorted to by 
whales gives very great advantages to our whalers, and need 
only be mentioned to be appreciated; fishing at all seasons, 
opportunities to winter and refit, depots for cargoes, and regu¬ 
larity in transhipping thence to the east or to the Pacific ports. 
It opens the broad question whether whaling cannot be more ef¬ 
fectually and more profitably done in smaller vessels, specially 
designed and constructed for capturing the whale, and then 
storing the oil at some depot in the Behring sea where it can be 
regularly shipped to its destination, while the vessel, working 
until the latest day of the season, discharges her crew of Aleuts 
6 
