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THE YOUTIPS CABINET. 201

Perils of Whale Catching.

xz of the most entertaining books
we have read for many a day,
was placed on our table not long
since, written by our friend, the
Rev. Henry T. Cheever. The title of
this volume is “The Whale and his
Captors,” and the object of it is to sketch
in detail the adventures of whalemen.
Some time since, Mr. Cheever made a
cruise himself in a whale-ship, and is a

witness of a great portion of what he re-.

lates. Our little readers would have a
treat, if they should get }.sld of this book.
We hope they will have a chance to read
it, but fearing some of them may not be so
highly favored, we think we will take a
chapter out of the book, and put it into
the Cainer:

One captain says he has seen instances
of the most wonderful strength and ac-
tivity in the north-west whales, greater
than he ever saw before in either right
or sperm. He was once fast to a large
cow whale, which was in company with
a small one, a full-grown calf. They
kept together, and after a time the cap-
tain hauled his boat up between them.
When they were both within reach, he
shoved his lance “into the life” of the
cow, at which she threw her flukes and
the small part of her body completely
over the head of the boat without touch-
ing it (although they were half drowned
with the water she scooped up,) and the
full weight of the blow, intended for the
boat, fell upon the back of the other
whale. He sunk immediately, going
down bent nearly double, and, the cap-
tain thinks, must have been killed by the

blow. The same person has seen a stout
hickory pole, three inches in diameter

 

and six feet long, broken into four pieces
by a blow from a whale’s tail, and the
pieces sent flying twenty feet in the air
and that, too, when no other resistance
was offered than that of the water upon
which it floated.

The first whale this man struck there

turned him over in two different boats,
and afterward “knocked them into kind-
ling wood,” while spouting blood into
thick clots, and yet this whale lived four
hours after, showing its great tenacity
of life. He came up alongside the boat,
and turned it over with his nose, as a .
hog would his eating-trough, and then

with his flukes deliberately broke it up.
Of course the crew had to take to Na-
ture’s oars, and they all marvelously es-
caped unhurt, although one of them was
carried sitting upon the whale’s flukes

several rods, till he slid off unharmed

from his strange sea- chariot.

One of the most thrilling stories con-
nected with the adventures of whalemen
was detailed some time’ ago, in the
“Sheet Anchor.” I give the substance
of it:

We were cruising somewhere between
the latitude of thirty-six and thirty-seven
degrees south, and the longitude of sixty-
eight degrees east, in search of right
whales. It was in the afternoon, and the
ship was moving along under her top-
gallant sails at the rate of about five
knots the hour, ‘The most hardened
grumbler could not find fault with: the
day. At the fore and main top-gallant
cross-trees were two men on the look-
out for whales. It was now nearly four
o’clock, when the man at the main sung
out, “There she blows!” He repeated
the cry regularly five or six times. All
was now excitement among the officers