"This day, Time winds th' exhausted chain
To run the twelvemonths' length again.
I see the old bald-pated fellow
With ardent eyes, complexion sallow,
Adjust the unimpaired machine
To wheel the equal, dull routine.
Underneath the record a postscript appears, in another hand:
"Oh let us love our occupations,
Bless the Co. and their relations,
Be content with our poor rations,
And always know our proper stations.
"In the North Sea lived a whale."
What is a whale? Well, although the whalers dub it so, it is not a fish, but is a true mammal, the last of the mammoth creatures that trod the earth and floundered the seas of a past age. The whale is the biggest, the meekest, and the most interesting of living animals. As we go north, we readjust all our ideas of distance and immensity. Rivers are longer, lakes more majestic, and whales bigger than we have ever dreamed. Examining a stranded whale at Herschel, we see the flippers to be really hands with four fingers and a thumb enveloped in a sheath, and rudimentary hind-legs are discovered under the tough skin. Without doubt, the ancestors of the whale were land mammals which became adapted to a littoral life, and in splashing round the shore acquired the habit of swimming. Subsequently carried out to sea, they became under the new environment the structure as we see it.
Off the delta of the Mackenzie, the Circumpolar of Arctic Bowhead whale(Balaena mysticetus) is making his last stand. Unless a close season is enforced, this cetacean carrying round his ten thousand dollar mouthful of baleen will soon fold his fluked fins like the Arab and swing that huge body of his into line with the Great Auk, the Sea-Otter, the Plains Buffalo, and all the melancholy procession of Canadian Has-Beens.
We Tell the Tale of a WhaleWe Tell the Tale of a Whale
We Tell the Tale of a WhaleWe Tell the Tale of a Whale
Whales divide themselves into two great classes: those furnished with teeth (theDenticete) and those in which the place of teeth is supplied by a sieve process, furnishing the baleen or "whalebone" of commerce (theMysticeteorBalaenidae). The members of the Baleen Whale family are the Sulphur-Bottoms, the Finner Whales or Rorquals, the Humpbacks, and the king of all whales, the founder of the municipality of Herschel Island, whom his pursuers call indiscriminately the "Arctic Whale," "Polar Whale," "Greenland Whale," "Bowhead," "Right Whale," or "Icebreaker."
Bowheads run in length from seventy to one hundred feet, weighing up to one hundred and ten tons each, there being authentic records of exceptional specimens whose weight reached two hundred and fifty tons. Comparisons are illuminating. The mammoth or hairy elephant in the Field Columbian Museum is nine feet six inches high and twelve feet in longitudinal measurement. The lips of a Bowhead whale are from fifteen to twenty feet in length and yield from one to two tons of pure oil each,—lips that turn a nigger-minstrel green with envy! The eyes placed in the posterior part of the head are each as big as an orange. The tongue of the whale is twenty feet long, and this member, by means of which he pushes to the top of his palate the animalculae on which he feeds (as you would a gooseberry), gives the whaler six tons of oil. The aorta is as big as a man's waist and, at each pulsation of the heart, spurts out ten to fifteen gallons of blood. The heart itself is more than a yard in transverse diameter. The toothed whales carry the teeth in their lower jaw, the most valuable of this lot being the Spermaceti or Sperm Whale or Cachalot, the Pilot Whale or Ca'ing Whale, the White Whale or Beluga, the Killer or Orca, the Narwhal, and such small fry as Blackfish, Porpoises, and Dolphins. Only the toothed whale eats fish; the others live upon animalculae and the most minute of marine life, called "brit" by the whalers. The Bowhead that we have come up to the Arctic to see feeds on the smallest infusoria. He couldn't eat a herring if by that one act he might attain immortality.
Whale errors die hard. Artists persistently depict the big animals as spouting beautiful fountains of water, but the fact is that whales breathe out air only from their lungs. They come to the surface for that purpose, the "blowing" being quite analogous to the breathing of land mammals. Noticing the condensation of a whale's breath up here in the icy Arctic, we guess at the cause which gave rise to this particular blunder. Milton in thirteen words manages to perpetrate three (whale) bulls. "At his gills draws in, and at his trunk, spouts out, a sea." Guiltless of either gills or trunk, no whale ever spouted out anything but common or seaside air.
The Bowhead is hunted for his "whalebone"; the Cachalot or true Sperm, the lord of the toothed whales, for that great lake of sperm oil and spermaceti which he carries round in a portable tank in the top of his head.
It is customary to call whales "fierce," "savage," "murderous," but this is rank libel, for the whale is timid and affectionate. Every family, however, has its black sheep. The Orca or Killer is the terror alike of sealing-rookeries, fish-schools, and whale bone whales. One Killer taken up here had in its stomach fourteen porpoises and fourteen large seals, and it choked to death on the fifteenth. Banded in Molly Maguire groups, the Killers murder the young seal-pups taking their first lessons in swimming off the Pribilofs. We have seen them, a pack of hungry sea-wolves, surround a Bowhead whale! A number of these brigands of the Bering Sea hang on to the lower lip of the big whale till the opened mouth allows a Killer to enter bodily, when the Bowhead's tongue is eaten out and the whole sea is a shambles. At the approach of the Killer even sea-lions seek the shore. And the Alaska Indian who would pose as Bad Bill of the Clambank to the third generation carves a Killer as the crest of his totem.
The American is more aggressive—shall we say progressive?—than the Canadian. The Bowhead whale has within recent years chosen for his summer habitat the pleasant waters off Arctic Canada. Each of these floating tanks of baleen and oil nets his lucky captor from thirteen thousand dollars upward?, and yet for twenty years Canadians have been content to see their more enterprising cousins from California come into their back-yard and carry off these oily prizes.
Two Little Ones at Herschel IslandTwo Little Ones at Herschel Island
Two Little Ones at Herschel IslandTwo Little Ones at Herschel Island
Is there much money in whales to-day? Are not oil and whalebone drugs in the market? Let us see. Off the Mackenzie mouth is Herschel Island anchorage. Here, since 1889, the American whaling-fleet, setting out from San Francisco, has made its summer stand, its winter waiting-quarters. One whale to one boat in a season covers the cost of outfitting and maintenance, and more than one spells substantial profit. In 1887, one of the Arctic whalers, the steamerOrca, captured twenty-eight whales. TheJeanettein 1905 got ten whales and a calf, theKarlukgot seven whales, theAlexandereight, theBowheadseven. The boats wintering at Herschel in that year had among them thirty-three whales and one calf. At fifteen thousand dollars each (San Francisco values for that season) the thirty-three whales netted very nearly half a million. Two years later theNarwhaltook out fifteen whales, theJeanetteandBowheadeach four. Although the average bone per head is two thousand pounds, sometimes the catch runs far beyond that figure. A whale caught by Capt. Simmons of the shipJohn M. Winthropcarried thirty-three hundred and fifty pounds of bone in its head,—$16,750! One of these at a time would be good fishing.
The first Bowhead taken from these waters went in 1891 to the American steam-whalerGrampus, her catch for three seasons being twenty-one whales. Previous to this, even wise whale-men thought it useless to go "to the east'ard of P'int Barrow" for this big whale; since that date the catch in Canadian waters has been thirteen hundred and forty-five whales. Ignoring the oil altogether and putting the "bone" (baleen) at two thousand pounds each whale and the value of it at five dollars a pound, both conservative figures, we find that thirteen and a half millions in whale-values have gone out of this Canadian sea-pasture the past twenty years, by the back-door route.
Are there as good fish in the sea as have come out of it? Expert evidence differs. Captain George B. Leavitt, of theNarwhal, in 1907 lowered twenty-two times without striking and yet went out with fifteen whales. He says he saw that season more whales than any year previous, but that they are on the move east and north.
The general practice is for a ship to reach this water from San Francisco in the early summer; whale as long as the ice will permit; go into winter quarters at Herschel; get out of the ice as soon as possible next summer, probably the first week in July; whale as long as it can stay without getting nipped by the new ice of September; carry out its catch through Bering Strait to San Francisco as late as possible; dispose of the cargo; refit; return next season, and do it all over again. The active whaling-season is restricted to eight or ten weeks, and every one on board a whaler from captain to galley-devil works on a lay. The captain gets one-twelfth of the take, the first mate one twenty-second, the second mate one-thirtieth, the third mate one forty-fifth, the carpenter one seventy-fifth, the steward one eightieth, fore-mast sailors one eightieth, green hands one two-hundredth. Engineers get about one hundred and twenty dollars a month straight. It looks all right in the contract signed a year ago in a San Francisco waterfront dive, but it never works out as it looks on paper. The A.B. overdraws from the slop-chest (often before the whale is caught) the vulgar-fraction which stands for his share of fat things, and you come across him possessed of the sulky mood which dining on dead horse (land or marine) induces in most of us.
A trade in fur also makes out by this Pacific-Arctic, Arctic-Pacific route. We estimate that total products to the value of a million and a half find their way each year out of Canada in the ships of the whaling-fleet. "The farther north the finer fur" is a recognised law. The American ship brings flour, provisions, Krag-Jorgensen guns, ammunition, tea, trinkets to the Eskimo, and receive for these the choicest furs this continent produces.
The Canadian Provinces which propinquity would seem to call to this international whale-joust are British Columbia and Alberta. British Columbia, in her splendid whaling-stations and refineries on Vancouver Island, has tasted whale-blood, the blood of the Humpback and Sulphur bottom, the Orca or Killer, the Cachalot or true Sperm, and one would think her appetite sufficiently whetted to want to acquire the "feel" of Arctic Bowhead profits, the fattest dividend-sheets of them all. Alberta claims as rich hinterland all the coal and gas and timber, tar, furs, feathers, and fish between the parallel of 60° and the uttermost edge of things. These winning bulks of blubber should by all laws of the game be hers. Some day Alberta's metropolis on the Saskatchewan, overcoming the rapids on the Athabasca and the Slave, will send her deep-sea vessels by interior waterways to pull down into Canadian pockets a tardy share of these leviathans. Will there be any left? It is hard to say.
Little wind-swept island of Herschel! We reach you to-day not by deep-sea vessel from the westward but up through the continent by its biggest northward-trending stream. Eighty miles through the Northern Ocean itself from the Mackenzie mouth brings our whale-boat grating upon the shingle. "As far as we go!" This is essentially the Island of Whales, the farthest north industrial centre in America, the world's last and most lucrative whaling-ground. It is well to take our bearings. We are in latitude 69-1/2° N. and just about 139° west of Greenwich; we are a full thousand miles nearer our Pole than the Tierra del Fuegan in South America is to his. And it blows. A nor'easter on Herschel never dies in debt to a sou'wester. Lifting itself one thousand feet above sea-level, this septentrional shelter for ships where the seagulls wheel at our approach, and as they wheel, whine like lost souls, is twenty-three miles in circumference, with neither water nor fuel. For six months every year comparative darkness wraps it around. Snow and ice hold it fast till mid-July; and yet people with tropic isles to choose from and green valleys where the meadow-lark sings have crowded here for twenty years to make their home!
The most incongruous lot that Fate ever jostled together into one corner,—who are they? The whaler of every country and complexion from Lascar to Swede, Eskimo men and women and big-eyed babies, half-caste hybrids of these two factors, Missionaries, and Mounted Police. It is interesting to note the order of their arrival. The whaler drawn by oily lure followed the Bowhead east and north from Bering Sea. To man his boats, to hunt caribou for him, and to furnish temporary spouses, the whaler picked up and attached to his ménage the Eskimo from the mainland in little bunchesen famille. Ensuing connubial complications brought the missionary on the scene. To keep the whaler and the missionary from each other's throats, and incidentally to make it easy for the American citizen to trade in Canadian baleen and blubber, came the debonair Royal Northwest Mounted Policeman, the red-coated incarnation of Pax Britannica. There winter at Herschel every year two hundred and fifty whalers and an equal number of Kogmollye and Nunatalmute Eskimo.
Pauline Cove on Herschel Island has three fathoms of water and can winter fifty ships. Landing and looking about us, we experience a feeling of remoteness, of alienation from the world of railroads and automobiles and opera tickets. Back of the harbour are the officers' quarters of the whaling company, the barracks of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, the huts of the Eskimo; in front of us the clear panorama of the mountains on the shore-line.
North America here, in profound and lasting loneliness, dips its shaggy arms and ice-bound capes into an ocean illuminated now by the brief smile of summer but, for ten months out of the twelve, drear and utterly desolate. The most striking features of the off-shore islands is that they are islands of ice rather than of earth. Slightly rising above ocean-level, they exhibit one or two feet of sandy soil, and between this scant counterpane and the interior foundations of the earth is nothing but pure translucent ice. There is going on a rapid disintegrating of these islands. The whaler calls this far fringe of America "the ocean graveyard" and "the step-mother to ships." There have been five wrecks on this coast in recent years: thePenelopeoff Shingle Point, theBonanzaoff King Point, theTritonon the shores of Herschel itself, theAlexandernear Horton River, a little missionary craft off Shingle Point, and Mikklesen's shipThe Duchess of Bedford, abandoning her ambitious search for a dream-continent in Beaufort Sea to deposit her tapped-camphor-wood bones on the edge of the ocean of her quest.
The Mackenzie River carries the freshening influence of its current for miles out to sea, and the whole mainland coast is piled high with drift-trees carried by its stream to the Eskimo,—a boon more prized by them than the most seductive story the missionary can tell of the harps and golden streets of that strange heaven of the white man where whale-meat is unknown and blubber enters not.
In July, resurrection comes to Herschel,—saxifrages, white anemones through the snow, the whoop of the mosquito-hawk, and the wild fox dodging among the dwarf-junipers and uncovered graves! And the Midnight Sun? It is not a continual blare of light for twenty-four hours. It sweeps through the midnight heavens, but between ten o'clock in the evening and four in the morning there is a sensible change. Colour tints and lines of demarcation on sea and ships are harder to distinguish, shadows less clearcut. Birds roost and even flowers close, Nature whispering to both that, if they would reproduce after their kind in the short Arctic summer, energies must be conserved. Surely the world holds nothing more beautiful than this Polar night, this compelling gloaming, the "cockshut light" of Francis Thompson. Here the evening and the morning sit together hand in hand, and, even as you watch, lead in the day, the new day born beneath the starless sky. The July sun stabs into activity our incongruous community. On board the vessels guns are cleaned, harpoons pointed, whale-boats caulked, and the winter deck-house is lifted off bodily. Up in the rigging fox-skins and all the year's fur-booty sweeten in the sunlight, and eagerly the spring "leads" in the ice are watched from hour to hour if a way be opened to trend out in the track of the big Bowhead.
Strange people crowd the fo'castle. Two years ago the ships bound for "Outside" got nipped in early ice and were forced to winter at Herschel all unprepared. Reduced to half-rations the crew got weak, and scurvy threatened. The Mounted Police (who by the way are "mounted" in imagination only, as there is nothing for the most gallant to stride here but Husky dogs), in making examination of the men below decks, got to their enquiries a technical reply that staggered them. One able-bodied seaman, busied with between-decks blubber, proved to be a medical man with degrees from two colleges. He subsequently made at the request of the Police a searching report on the state of health of the island community, adding suggestions for its improvement. The report was signed "T.H. Toynbee Wright, M.D.," and, after making it, the A.B., M.D. saluted, donned his oily overalls, and turned once more to the savoury spoils of the Bowhead. Which all goes to prove that in these latitudes "you never can tell."
Whale-men at Herschel give whales five names according to age and size: they are "suckers" under a year, "short-heads" as long as they are suckled, "stunts" at two years, "skull-fish" with baleen less than six feet long, and "size-fish" at the age when a boy reaches man's estate. A whale needs no re-incarnation theory of the theosophist, for he crowds enough experience into one sea-life to satisfy the fact-thirst of the greediest little Gradgrind. Fancy, thrashing the sea for a thousand years! A "sucker" who happened to be disporting round the British Isles when Alfred the Great was burning those historic cakes and prefiguring with candles the eight-hour day may still be chasing whale-brit round an Arctic iceberg. The whale mates, we are told, once and for keeps. Jogging along from one ocean end to another with the same wife for a thousand years without turning fluke to look at an affinity! Shades of Chicago and Pittsburg, hide your wings! Whales follow their annual migration as regularly as do moose and caribou on land, the seal and salmon in the Pacific. Seen first in May in Bering Strait, the Bowheads trend from here north and east, doubling back on their westward journey in July and August, when the Herschel Island whalers go out to intercept them. September sees the great mammals off Southern Kamchatka, and year by year with regularity they follow this Arctic orbit, edging farther in successive seasons to the north and east. The usual track of any family of whales may be left at a tangent on account of a furious storm, excessive cold, the want of food, the harassing of an enemy, or a change in the season of their amours.
A whale, for an old party, is not so slow. Alarmed while extended motionless at the surface of the sea, he can sink in five or six seconds beyond the reach of human enemies. His velocity along the surface horizontally, diving obliquely or perpendicularly, seems to be the same, a rate of from twelve to fourteen miles an hour. Now, to carry a whale of seventy-four tons through the Arctic at the rate of twelve miles an hour would require a (sea) horse-power of one hundred and forty-five. Captain Scoresby, a whale expert, by careful calculation estimates that a surface of two square miles of the Arctic Ocean contains 23,888,000,000,000,000 of the minute animalculae on which the Bowhead feeds, so we hope there is enough to go round. He quaintly elucidates this inconceivable number by explaining that eighty thousand persons would have been employed since Adam in counting these little medusae in the two square miles. Why any one should count them we fail to conceive and gladly accept Scoresby's figures.
The poet tells of shooting an arrow into the air and "long years afterwards in an oak he found the arrow still unbroke." Those who stick harpoons into whales and suffer the animal to get away start floating rumours (a sort of cyclometer of the sea) for their grandsons to read in blubbery history three generations after. England offered knighthood and a bag of sterling pounds to him who would discover a Northwest Passage connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific. M'Clure and the heirs of Sir John Franklin disputed the honour of this achievement. In the "North Sea" lived a whale who exhibited in his own person indubitable proof of having found that elusive Anian Strait. At Herald Island, due north of Bering Strait, in 1886, a whale was caught who carried round in his inside pocket of blubber the head of a harpoon markedAnsell Gibbs. TheAnsell Gibbswas wrecked at Marble Island south of Chesterfield Inlet on Hudson Bay on October 13, 1871. Imagination sees opportunity in this for establishing hyperborean letter-service between lovers kept apart by cruel ice-floes. Eskimo Evangeline wandering under Northern Lights seeking Dusky Gabriel might find here a carrier-pigeon of utility. Is it not Pliny who gives us a delightful account of Hippo's enamoured dolphin?
Captain Kelly was the first to notice that whales sing One Sunday, while officers from three ships were "gamming" over their afternoon walrus-meat, Kelly dropped his glass with, "I hear a Bowhead!" There was much chaffing about "Kelly's band," but Kelly weighed anchor and went to find the band-wagon. Every sail followed his, and the result was the bagging of three whales. Among Bowheads, this sing-song is a call made by the leader of a school as he forces passage through Bering Sea to give notice to those who follow that the straits are clear of ice. Walruses and seals and all true mammals having lungs and living in the water have a bark that sounds weird enough coming up from hidden depths. Every look-out from a mast-head notices that, when one whale is struck, at the very impact of the harpoon the whole school is "gallied" or stampeded as they hear the death-song. The dying swan may not sing, but there is no doubt about the ante-mortem Valkyrie song of the whale. From the Bowhead the sound comes like the drawn-out "hoo-hoo-oo-oo-oo" of the hoot-owl. A whaler stops coiling his harpoon-line to tell you that "beginning on 'F' the cry may rise to 'A,' 'B,' or even 'C' before slipping back to 'F' again." He assures us that, "with the Humpback the tone is much finer, sounding across the water like the 'E' string of a violin."
Whalers themselves on this grim shore die without requiem. Every year men desert from the ships. They make their way across from Herschel to a mainland of whose geography they know nothing, thinking that once they strike the shore they can find railway trains which will take them to the gold-mines. One man, Morand, left his ship without sled or dogs. He carried only a gun, twenty rounds of ammunition, some cigarette papers and tobacco. In the spring they found him about a day's journey from the ship, frozen to death. He sat with his gun leaning against his left arm, and a cigarette in his mouth. Both feet and one hand were eaten off. He had fired off nine shots, probably as a signal which was never heard.
Breeding Grounds of the SealsBreeding Grounds of the Seals
Breeding Grounds of the SealsBreeding Grounds of the Seals
Within recent years, on other shores but this one, an innovation has entered the whaling business. The modern plan is to have shore-refineries and from these strategic bases to send out strongly-built high-speed steamers to shoot detonating harpoons from a cannon into the whale. Such methods are pursued with profit on Newfoundland and Vancouver Island shores. The gun-harpoon, the invention of Sven Foyn, a Norwegian, is furnished at the point with a contrivance which, as it enters the whale, opens out anchor-like flukes which clutch his vitals. Connected by a line to the whaling-steamer, the harpoon holds the quarry until the whaler steams alongside, when the "fish" is soon dispatched. A nozzle is attached to the harpoon-wound, and hot air from the engine pumped into the "proposition" keeps it afloat. The Vancouver Island station has bagged as many as five whales in one day,—Cachalots, Humpbacks, and Sulphur-Bottoms.
The Eskimo say, "There is no part of a seal that is not good," and the same applies to whales. Blubber and bone have their regular markets. The viscera, scraps of fat and oddments tried out in fiery furnaces, appear in the form of pungent snuff-like powder, a much-sought fertiliser. From the Vancouver Island stations it goes across to enrich the cane-fields of Honolulu and the rose-gardens of Nippon. The Japs are eager customers for the dried or smoked whale-meat; and whale-steak broiled to a turn can scarcely be distinguished from choice porterhouse, since it is absolutely free from fishy taste. Far back in the fourteenth century the Biscayans made whale-venison their staple, and Norway to-day has more than one establishment which turns out canned whale. Newfoundlanders find whale-meat a welcome change from cod perpetual, and I have seen the Indians of Cape Flattery eat it when it hailed you a mile to windward and had more than begun to twine like a giddy honeysuckle. Now, enterprising people are talking of canning whales' milk, a dense yellow fluid like soft tallow. When the milk-maid goes out to milk a whale she must take half a dozen barrels along as milking pails. The Eskimo like it. Soon the soda-fountains on Fort Macpherson and Herschel Island will bear the legend, "Whale cream soda" and "Best Whale Milkshake."
To have an even superficial knowledge of the commercial products of the whale, one must learn of baleen, of whale-oils and spermaceti, of ambergris, whale-guano, whale-ivory, and whale-leather.
What do we do with baleen? It so combines lightness, elasticity, and flexibility, that nothing yet invented adapts itself so perfectly to all the requirements of the fashionable corset. Whalebone whips are made from single pieces of baleen seven or eight feet long. A whalebone horsewhip costs from fifteen to eighteen dollars and will outlast a dozen cheaper persuaders. The Sairy Gamp umbrella of the last generation, which boasted whalebone ribs, never "broke its mighty heart" in a rainstorm (and incidentally could never be shut up tight). Flexible steel has taken the place of whalebone in many of the arts; but new avenues of usefulness open up to baleen. Out of it artificial feathers of exquisite lightness and wigs or toupees are made. Shredded into fine filaments, baleen is now woven in with the other fibres in the manufacture of the finest French silks, imparting resilience and elasticity to the rich material. A Chicago paper of the date of this writing advertises:
WHALEBONE TEETH $5
A GREAT DISCOVERY
THE NEW WHALEBONE PLATE WHICH IS THE LIGHTEST
AND STRONGEST SET KNOWN
DOES NOT COVER THE ROOF OF THE MOUTH
Guaranteed ten years
YOU BITE CORN OFF THE COB
Spermaceti, the solid waxy body carried round in the Cachalot's head in solution, is a valuable whale-product. Bland and demulcent, spermaceti is employed as an ingredient in ointments, cosmetics, and cerates. Spermaceti candles of definite size form the measure of electric light, giving rise to the phrase "of so many candle-power." Present-day spermaceti is both a saving and a destructive agent. Large quantities of it are used in Europe in the manufacture of ecclesiastical candles, and part of the same consignment may help to make self-lubricating cartridges.
Most valuable of all whale-products, the costliest commodity on this earth ounce for ounce with the one exception of radium, is ambergris. As amber was once considered "the frozen tears of seagulls," so ambergris for ages puzzled the ancients. Some called it "the solidified foam of the sea," with others it was a "fungoidal growth of the ocean analogous to that on trees." When people in the old days came across anything exceedingly costly they wanted to eat it, on the same principle which makes the baby put each new gift into his mouth. So we have historic record of pearl soup a la Cleopatra, and dishes dashed with ambergris. Milton sings of,—
"Beasts of chase, or fowl of game,
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled,
Grisamber-steamed."
What is this choice tidbit? It is a morbid secretion of the intestines of the sick Sperm-whale, and sells for from thirty to forty dollars an ounce. Ambergris, if discovered in the animal itself, is always in a dead or dying body, but it is usually found floating on the ocean or cast up on the shore. Many a day, as kiddies on Vancouver Island beaches, have we turned over bunches of kelp, trying to smell out that solid, fatty, inflammable dull grey substance with its sweet earthy odour. The present-day use of ambergris is to impart to perfumes a floral fragrance. It has the power to intensify and fix any odour. In pharmacy, it is regarded as a cardiac and anti-spasmodic and as a specific against the rabies. For years it has been used in sacerdotal rites of the church; and suitors of old times sought with it to charm their mistresses. The dying sperm, spouting up the ghost, offers of his very vitals to aid the lover and serve the church.
Fascinating are the finds of ambergris. The barqueSea-Foxof New Bedford, in 1866, off the coast of Arabia, took a one hundred and fifty-six pound mass of ambergris, which was sold to the Arabs of Zanzibar for ten thousand dollars in gold. TheAdeline Gibbs, in the same year, took one hundred and thirty-two pounds from a bull-sperm south of St. Helena, and sold the hunk for twenty-three thousand dollars. Three winters ago an Arctic whaling-crew put into Seattle, and there leaked out the interesting story of how, not recognising the priceless unguent, they had greased their oars, masts, and knee-boots with "a big lump of ambergrease."
In modern whaling not an ounce of the carcase is cast as rubbish to the void. The intestines make a soft kid which takes any dye and is largely used for artistic leather-work. The size of these immense strips makes possible splendid belts for machinery with a minimum of joinings. The chemically-macerated bones are turned into an "indestructible" crockery-ware which is far more enduring than anything made of vegetable-fibre. The Beluga gives us the best shoe-strings in the world. You can lace your shoes with a Beluga lace for two years and be sure it will not break the morning you are in an especial hurry to catch an inter-Reuben train.
An interest attaches to living whales which outweighs the fascination with which we study their dead parts. Each species of the whale propagates with one of its own species only. The fidelity of whales to each other exceeds the constancy of birds. The whale mother gives birth to one calf, and in extremely rare cases two calves, producing every second year, the young being born between the end of March and the beginning of May. When the mother suckles her young she throws herself on one side on the surface of the sea and the calf regularly feeds at the breast (like a young Eskimo) for nearly two years. During this time the baby is extremely fat and the mother correspondingly emaciated. Perhaps nothing in nature is more touching than the devotion of a female whale to its wounded young. Whalers harpoon the babe at the breast so that they may afterwards secure the dam. In this case, the mother joins the wounded young under the surface of the water, comes up with it when it rises to breathe, encourages it to swim off, assists its flight by taking it under her fin, and seldom deserts it while life remains.
Unless the Circumpolar Bowhead is to become extinct within a decade, the thinking world should strengthen the hands of the Canadian authorities in an effort to put a close season for four or five years on the great Arctic Baleen Whale. At their rate of reproduction it is not so easy to restock a whale pasture as a salmon stream. Cutting down a whale which has taken ten centuries to grow is like cutting down an oak-tree with a thousand concentric rings. You cannot in one or two or twenty scant generations of man grow another one to take its place.
"The old lost stars wheel back, dear lass,
That blaze in the velvet blue.
They're God's own guides on the Long Trail—
The trail that is always new."
Kipling
.
A tax on tea caused the revolt of the thirteen Colonies, a taunting load of tennis-balls lost France to the Dauphin. Eighty years ago on this Arctic edge, white beads, or the lack of them, lost a lucrative fur-trade, alienated the Loucheux and caused the death of whites. "Trifles make the sum of human things."
The old records tell the story. John Bell from Fort Good Hope, under date of August 14th, 1827, writes to the Factor at Fort Simpson:
"The beads sent in for the Loucheux trade are not sufficiently large to please them. I request you will endeavour to send in the largest size for the trade of the ensuing year. A specimen of the kind wanted I send enclosed."
The Factor at Fort Simpson, under date of November 22nd of the same year, writes to the Governor and Chief Factors at Montreal:
"I now forward a specimen of the common white beads wanted for the trade with the Loucheux Indians. It is their request and I hope it will be attended to. I would not venture to make the demand, were it not from conviction that without this favourite article these Indians look with indifference on the best of our goods. No other ornamental article is ever asked for or wanted by these natives."
The same official on March 15th, 1828, pleads with Montreal:
"The white beads demanded for the Loucheux trade I hope will be sent, and of the size according to sample enclosed. May I use the freedom of representing the importance of getting this article to the liking of the Indians, to come up by the Montreal canoes and be ready for outfit 1829? Three kegs will contain the quantity required, 200 to 250 pounds."
Again on the 29th of November, 1829, he writes Montreal:
"The White Beads asked for the trade with the Loucheux are not according to the order sent, 15 pounds only of the quantity received (200 pounds) are of the proper size, the remainder being the same as those in outfit 1825 so much complained of. They will not be satisfactory to the Indians. We request you will be pleased to make a strong representation to their Honours at Home that this article be sent according to order and sample. We now conceive to say anything further would be tiresome."
The Fort Simpson Factor on March 19th, 1830, reports to Montreal:
"The goods came. The white beads was too small and not according to order or sample asked for. The Indians would not take them and left the Fort dissatisfied."
The Trader at Fort Good Hope augments the story by recording that the Indians would be better pleased in trade with two small kegs of the special beads they wanted than with half a ton of any other trade goods which London could manufacture and send out. The sequel of the story is that, disappointed time and again in not getting their favourite beads, the Loucheux Indians failed to bring in the autumn supply of meat to Fort Good Hope and in consequence, before the snows of the winter of 1831 had melted, many of the white men attached to that post died of starvation.
The Keele Party on the Gravel RiverThe Keele Party on the Gravel River
The Keele Party on the Gravel RiverThe Keele Party on the Gravel River
We had gone North with the birds in spring and now, as we turn our faces homeward, the first migrants with strong wing are beginning their southward flight. Our travel is against current now, for we make slower time than we did coming in and consequently see more of the passing shore-line. The last specimens we gather within the Arctic Circle are the blue blossoms of the flax. In them we see the earnest of many a cultivated farm of the future. The days are getting perceptibly shorter and one by one the old familiar constellations come back in the heavens. We find it a relief to have once more a twilight and a succeeding period of dusk. Yet are we loath to leave this fascinating North with its sure future, its quaint to-days, and all the glamour of its rich past.
We had just passed Fort Norman when the sharp eyes of an Indian deck-hand saw three figures on the beach ahead. Pulling in at the point where the Gravel River joins the Mackenzie, we find a regular Robinson Crusoe group,—Mr. J. Keele, of the Dominion Government Survey, and his two associates. Going in on the Yukon side, Mr. Keele's task has been to cross the Divide between the Yukon and the Mackenzie, mapping the rocks. The only white man they had seen in sixteen months was a French priest who had passed yesterday, and whose knowledge of current events in Canada and Europe was scanty. They were glad to see us. A moose-skin boat showed how they had run the rough Gravel; the meat of two moose smoked over the camp-fire; their dogs were fat. These are men who know the woods—no hard-luck story here. It needs only Friday's funny fat umbrella to complete the picture, with the goat scampering in the middle distance.
Coming on board, the surveyors are greedy for newspapers, and we in return learn somewhat of that great slice of land which they are the first to traverse. The Gravel River is two hundred and fifty-five miles long, with "white water" all the way. The force of the current may be appreciated from the fact that it is forty-four hundred feet above the sea-level at the Height-of-Land, and only four hundred feet here where it enters the Mackenzie. All along the banks of the Gravel are moose, mountain sheep, and caribou. The winter cabin of the party was built on the Ross River and there, during the past winter, they experienced a temperature of 54° below. A party of this kind must be to a large extent self-supporting, as it would be impossible to carry from the outside food for such a long sojourn. Speaking with Mr. Keele, one is forcibly struck with the fact that what the technical schools teach their students forms but a small part of the equipment of the man who would do field work in Northern Canada—packing, tracking, hunting, and breaking trail,—each man must do his share of these.
The Keele party on the great watershed, as they travelled east, crossed two families of Mackenzie River Indians going westward to hunt, on the west side of the ridge, the marten and the beaver. It was 32° below, and cold. The whole families were on the march, a little baby tucked in the curve of the sled, and tottering on foot an old, old woman, bent and wrinkled and scarcely able to move. As the Indians were on their return journey toward the Mackenzie in spring, the Keele party saw them again. But the old woman was not there. Under some lonely mound where snow falls in winter and the leaves of birch and cottonwood flutter down in the shrieking winds of autumn rest the bones of the old woman, her many journeys ended. The wearer of a costly fur coat in the glittering capitals of the Old World seldom stops to conjecture how much of hardship, patient suffering, and loneliness go to the making of that luxurious garment. In order that one might be warmly clad, many have gone cold, more than one sad, tired, old head has lain down for the last time by the lonely camp-fire.
Sad is the lot of the Indian woman of the North. Fated always to play a secondary part in the family drama, it is hard to see what of pleasure life holds for her. The birth of a girl baby is not attended with joy or thankfulness. From the beginning the little one is pushed into the background. The boy babies, even the dogs, have the choicer bed at night, and to them are given the best pieces of the meat. The little girl is made to feel that she has come into a world that has no welcome for her and her whole life seems to be an apology. You read it in the face of every Indian girl or woman you meet, from the shrinking pathetic little figure in the camp to the bent old crone, whose upturned face with its sadly acceptive look gives you the flicker of a smile.
Storm-stayed at Wrigley Harbour at the entrance to Great Slave Lake, we have some splendid fishing,—jackfish, whitefish, loche, inconnu, "and here and there a lusty trout and here and there a grayling." Within an hour I get fifteen graylings to my own rod. Collectively they weigh just a little over thirty pounds. Swimming against the current, they take the fly eagerly; and one cannot hope to land a more gaudy or more gamy fish. Its big dorsal fin is rainbow-tinct, the tail an iridescent blue, and the scales pure mother-of-pearl. Mr. Keele has had "The Complete Angler" for two years with him in the fastnesses, and as he helps us prepare the catch for our evening meal over the coals, quotes blithely that the grayling is eating fit only for "anglers and other honest men."
The traverse of Great Slave Lake in the teeth of a wind is not without its interest, for the new steamer has yet to be tried in the waters of what practically amounts to an open sea. She behaves well, and brings us dry-shod into Fort Rae.
The First Type-writer on Great Slave LakeThe First Type-writer on Great Slave Lake
The First Type-writer on Great Slave LakeThe First Type-writer on Great Slave Lake
We are the first white women who have penetrated to Fort Rae, and we afford as much interest to the Indians as they afford us. Lone Fort Rae, clinging to the Northern Arm of Great Slave Lake, was noted in the past as a "meat-post." It supplied the Mackenzie District with dried caribou-meat, and formed an outfitting point for the few big game hunters who trended east from here into the Barren Grounds seeking the musk-ox. Its foundation dates back to some time before the year 1820. We cross a bridge of clever Indian construction and sit for a while to muse on a flat boulder of primal rock. This stands as bell-tower to a quaint bell cast in Rome and bears an inscription to some dead and gone Pope. The missionary priest over half a century ago paddled in here bringing the Gospel to the Dog-Ribs.