The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1903-11-07

years was such herd seen as this one,
and men and women waded waist deep
into the surf to kill them with the
improvised weapons at hand.
The whales proper which frequent the
Grand bank are immense creatures,
from forty to one hundred feet long.
The include every species, great and
ST I'll, except the caehalot, or sperm
y4ale, of the tropics, and the bowhead,
Or right whale, of the arctics. The
minute marine organisms and jellyfish
on which they feed exist in the greatest
quantity on the bank, and there the
cetaceans bambol and play in herds as
large as the fleets of cod fishing vessels
which cruise there. These vessels have
counted as many as two hundred and
eighty spouting together within a few
miles, and their habitat extends north
to Hudson bay. A lighthouse keeper
complained to the marine department
recently that he could not sleep because
of their believing at night, and asked
for holiday to restore his shattered
constitution. He naively observed that
| they were only sixty or eighty feet long,
and evidently was of opinion that the
monsters twice that sixe existed in the
seas, and that he was fortunate that
they did not poster him. They are as
great nuisance to fishing craft and
gear, which they collide with or destroy,
and there is a perpetual war between
them and the fishfolk, who, with
incredible daring, hunt them in every
sort of marine fabric, from a rowboat
to steamship.
For the past five or six years the
whaling has been done almost wholly by
steamers, four small, but handy ships,
which have had phenomenal success.
The Norwegians have similar, but not
nearly so lucrative a fishery in Iceland,
and the first ship used in Newfoundland
was obtained from them. The business
prospered so that three others have been
acquired since, and four more will be
placed in commission next season. The
fishing is carried on at different times
on different parts Of the coast, and so
far the four ships have averaged one
hundred and seventy each year, with a
prospect of obtaining another fifty or
sixty before the year ends. The pursuit
has been robbed of much Of it's dangers
by this mode, the steamers chasing the
whales and firing explosive harpoons at
them from small cannon fixed on the
bow of each boat. When this weapon
penetrates the fish it explodes. and the
charge destroys the whales intestines,
at the same time generating gas which
helps to keep the carcass affoat, so that
the creature is killed and buoyed up at
h. .4o o.,@
daily from the coast, kill their prey
within a radius of forty or fifty miles,
and tow it back at night, where a fac
tory or refinery converts the fat into oil
and the carcass into fertilizer. In
stormy weather the ships cannot work,
because the seas would bury the cannon
on the bow, but when the day is fine it
is not uncommon for two or three, and
sometimes as many as Ave, whales to
fall victims to one steamer, which lows
them back to port in a long procession.
They are imemnsely powerful and
long-lived animals, and when they are
not killed outright at first often tow the
steamer for hours before they can be
approached and slain. They are never
fired at when approaching the ship, for
they would at once ram and destroy her,
but when attacked from behind their in
stinct is to fly, and they hurry off at a
speed to which pain and terror lend
wings. 1t is weary work blowing along
behind one of these frantic monsters,
watching its agonized struggles and un-
able to get near enough to put an end
to its sufferlngs and insure to the ship
that it will not break away, carrying
harpoon and. line with 1t.
+ In 1891 a whaleboat, in charge Of one
Dawson, In Placentia bay, with six men
: in 1T, was towed around Cape Race and
north to Bacalien a distance of two
hundred miles in an air line, but proba-
bly, increaser to three hundred by the
doubling of the whale. The trip occu.
pied thirty-four hours, and was the
: longest ever known, but they stuck tt
: their fish and eventually killed it,
Newfoundland Letter in the New Yorl
Times.