Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 2.djvu/74

 the mother seeks a more genial climate, to bring it to maturity. They generally reach Bermuda about the middle of March, where they remain but a few weeks, after which they visit the West-India islands, then bear away to the southward, and go round Cape Horn, returning to the "Polar seas by the Aleutian islands and Behring's Straits, which they reach in the following summer; when the young whale, having acquired 'size and strength in the southern latitudes, is enabled to contend with his enemies in the north, and here also the dam meets the male again. From my own experience and the inquiries I have been enabled to make, I am tolerably certain that this is a correct statement of the migration of these animals, the females annually making the tour of the two great American continents, attended by their young.

The "maternal solicitude" of the whale, makes her a dangerous adversary, and many serious accidents occur in the season for catching whales. On one occasion I had nearly paid with my life