172 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Feb. io, 1912 
Porpoise Fishing at Cape Hatteras 
By FRANK A. HEYWOOD 
N early the whole 300 miles of North Caro¬ 
lina seacoast is a sterile reef of yellow 
sand, as destitute of vegetation as the 
deserts of Arabia. This reef is cut through at 
long intervals by inlets that make of it a chain 
of islands, some of which are forty miles long, 
and but little more than one mile wide at any 
point. The inlets afford passageway for vessels 
of light draft, and through them the fresh 
waters of the sounds and their tributaries flow 
out and mingle with the ocean. The coast, owing 
to the fact that the greater part of it is elevated 
but a few feet above high tide, and that the 
three great capes—Hatteras, Lookout and Fear- 
shoot out many miles into the ocean, is prover¬ 
bially a dangerous one. 
This breakwater is largely a neutral territory, 
where ownership is a matter of dispute. Some 
maintain that it belongs to the Federal Gov¬ 
ernment, but when the latter wishes to erect 
thereon a life-saving station or lighthouse, 
a convenient owner, or one who purposes to be 
such, never fails to put in an appearance and 
howl painfully for his pound of flesh. Among 
those, however, who dwell upon the mainland, 
and who frequent this strip of beach, it is looked 
upon as neutral ground where neither man nor 
Government possesses any right other than that 
of might, and where the minor canons of moral¬ 
ity may be stretched without breakage to an al¬ 
most unlimited tension. 
Wrecks—and many occur on these sand dunes 
—are stripped with a bewildering celerity. The 
coast is wreck-strewn, and how gladly wrecks 
and their rich freight are welcomed by the peo¬ 
ple who live along its sands. They regard the 
tempest as a friendly fairy, and all that comes 
within their range is considered theirs by right, 
unless interfered with by Government life-savers. 
Under any circumstances a wreck throws these 
people into spasms of remunerative activity. The 
natives of these reefs are chiefly fishermen, and 
many of them are engaged the greater part of 
the time at the porpoise fishing grounds at Cape 
Hatteras, the only one on the Atlantic coast. 
The porpoise, contrary to general belief, is not 
a fish, but an air-breathing mammal, warm¬ 
blooded, viviparous, and suckling its young. 
1 hough shaped like a fish and living in water 
exclusively, and moving in the same manner 
with them, it must come to the surface for air. 
During the summer these animals are scattered 
all over the seas, and are familiar objects to the 
steamship passengers, but when cold weather 
comes, the prey upon which they feed—men¬ 
haden, herring and other small fishes that asso¬ 
ciate in schools—go southward and assemble by 
millions in the shallows lying between Ocracoke 
and Hatteras Inlet. Cape Hatteras affords a 
barrier against the 5 erce winds from the north, 
and in the waters below it these little fish seek 
shelter. There, accordingly, thousands of por¬ 
poises congregate. 
Usually there are about twenty men in a por¬ 
poise camp. There must be a sufficient number 
to man four boats and as many seines. The 
boats are distributed at three stations along shore. 
Two of them are together at one spot, while the 
third is a mile above, and the fourth a mile be¬ 
low. Each boat has a seine aboard. Lookouts 
are continually stationed upon high bluffs to 
watch for game, and they signal with flags when 
a school of porpoises is coming. 
Suppose the animals are curvetting down the 
coast. Warned in time by the signals, the men 
at the station furthest south row rapidly out to 
sea, dropping their seine as they go. If the 
thing has been properly managed, they have been 
in time with their net to head off the first of 
the animals. As soon as the school, or most of 
it, has got past the station furthest north, the 
boat from that point is run out in like fashion, 
dropping its seine on the way. Thus the por¬ 
poises find themselves hemmed in between two 
fences of net, each stretching a mile into the 
ocean. 1 hey might easily escape by swimming 
seaward, save for the fact that meanwhile the 
two boats from the middle station have put out 
a mile from land, not dropping their seines on 
the way, but extending them on a line with the 
shore and joining the extremities of the other 
two seines. In this way is made within a few 
minutes a rectangular pen two miles long and 
one mile broad, in which the luckless beasts are 
confined. They could easily get out of course 
by breaking through the nets, inasmuch as their 
strength is enormous, but they evidently do not 
think of that. 
T he use of firearms is very extensive in 
Spain, says Vice-Consul J. L. Byrne, of 
Valencia, and particularly so in that 
region. An idea may be formed of the wide¬ 
spread popular taste for shooting game and 
wild fowl of every description from the fact 
that 20,000,000 empty sporting cartridges were 
imported into Spain last year and of these 
2,300,000 entered the port of Valencia alone. 
More than two-thirds of the total are of ordi¬ 
nary and law-grade quality, costing about 55 
cents per too unloaded, but there is also a lim¬ 
ited market for very high-grade sporting car¬ 
tridges with deep metallic lining, adapted for 
heavy charges of smokeless powders which are 
imported from Great Britain and the United 
States, and are retailed at $1.45 to $1.98 per too 
according to length and finish. The duty on 
unloaded cartridges is $14.47 per too kilos (220 
pounds), or approximately 10,000 shells of the 
ordinary light-weight varieties that constitute 
85 per cent, of the total imports. 
The natural sporting proclivities of the in¬ 
habitants of this district are fostered by the 
proximity of the Albufuera, an extensive marshy 
lake, visited in the fall and winter by myriads 
of wild ducks, coots and other waterfowl that 
migrate from northern Europe, while the forest 
wastes and arid brushwood hills of the in¬ 
terior are moderately stocked with red par¬ 
tridges, hares and rabbits. All the moist culti- 
The porpoises thus inclosed are surrounded 
with smaller seines and drawn in shore where 
they are kept in a pound until the fisherman 
wishes to kill them. Sometimes as many as 200 
will be secured at a single haul. The catch is 
very profitable, because there are several pro¬ 
ducts of the porpoise which are valuable. The 
skin affords an excellent leather. Upon being 
stripped from the animals, the hides are salted 
down, tanned crudely and shipped to Northern 
markets, where they are used in the manufacture 
of shoes, traveling bags and other goods. This 
leather has a particularly fine grain, and boots 
made from it are given a waterproof quality by 
the natural oil of the skin. 
However, the highest priced porpoise leather, 
which is very costly indeed, is obtained from the 
unborn young. It is of a most delicate texture 
and exquisitely mottled in black and white. For 
book covers it is a most admirable material. 
Every one has heard of porpoise oil, which is 
used for watches and other delicate machinery. 
It is one of the most costly oils known, because 
only a few ounces of it are secured from each 
animal. It is obtained from the jaws only, being 
tried out from the bones after the skin and flesh 
have been removed. There is another sort of 
oil procured from the fat beneath the skin and 
from the liver and other viscera. Hides are 
worth from seventy-five cents to $2.50 apiece, 
the latter price being paid for the best skins of 
unborn calves. A school of 200 porpoises repre¬ 
sents about $500 to the fishermen. Nobody has 
ever attempted to make any use of the skele¬ 
tons, which are scattered by tens of thousands 
along the shore below Cape Hatteras. 
vated valleys following the course of streams 
are also visited in the spring and summer by 
migratory quail that come over from North 
Africa. 
The trade in sporting guns, pistols, and re¬ 
volvers is of considerable importance, but only 
the very highest grades are imported. Nearly 
all medium quality, ordinary, and I6w priced 
products are manufactured in the country, most¬ 
ly at Eibar, the Basque Provinces in the north 
of Spain, where excellent workmen, many of 
whom study at the leading arms factories of 
Birmingham and Liege, make almost every 
form of gun, rifle, pistol, and revolver. The 
barrels are usually imported in the rough from 
Great Britain or Belgium and are bored and 
finished at the Spanish factories. The duty on 
sporting guns is equivalent to $3.86 per kilo, 
or approximately $12.16 on a 7-pound gun, and 
$1.54 per kilo on pistols of all kinds. 
American firearms on sale here at present are 
limited to repeating rifles and automatic pis¬ 
tols, and revolvers. Imitations of well-known 
makes are numerous, some of them selling as 
low as $1.40 retail price. 
Samples of double-barreled, central-fire shot¬ 
guns have been frequently imported at this city 
from the United States, but so far have failed 
to create a market. The proverbial hobbies and 
fads of sportsmen are perhaps nowhere more 
{Continued on page 192.) 
Firearms Trade in Spain 
