Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/322

306 In the spring of 1844, however, being employed on the Penobscot, and coming down the river on the log drive with the freshet, he decided to go on to Boston, with the intention of finding employment for about a year, and then returning home with a little cash. It actually took him forty years to get back, and that simply as a visitor. Finding no work in Boston, he went on to New York, and there being still unsuccessful, returned to Boston, whence he went to New Bedford, still bent on his quest. His determination not to go home until he had made some money, and some little experience that he already had on coasting vessels, induced him to accept the only job in sight, which was to ship on a whaling vessel, the Sally Ann, Captain Clark.

No small part of the industry of America has been in providing the world with illumination. The New England student and professional man, burning the midnight oil, created quite a part of the demand for which his brothers chasing the whales of the north or south seas found the supply—until the discovery of petroleum in large quantity.

Mr. Bradbury recalls freshly the numberless incidents of his whaling voyages, and the risks run in harpooning these leviathans, into whose noses the Yankee sailors managed to put a hook. In the southern Indian Ocean, where the Sally Ann went first, there were a number of narrow escapes. Once a vicious whale had been harpooned and in its violence was lashing the sea, and making dangerous lunges towards the boat. "Boat astern! boat astern!' came the order of the mate. Bradbury was at one of the oars, and recalls distinctly the energy which he put into his movement, and how he glanced