Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/265

 THE OCEANS 259

fatnre reveals this possible meat supply in the marine mammals. If we do not soon take heed^ there will be no mammals in the sea to f nmish meat. Man has been so criminally or stupidly wasteful of his earthly inheritance that he has bankrupted posterity in many things on both land and sea What a story of a warfare of passive resistance the marine mammals might tell I The history of the whale^ manatee^ dugong^ sea- cow, seal and the walrus would bring the blush of shame to the cheek of the humane reader.

The whale, the largest of living creatures, believed to be the largest animal that has ever lived on this globe, no doubt attracted the attention of the earliest people. In ninth-century European history there is record of whaling. Yet it did not become a serious matter from the standpoint of the whale until the sixteenth century. Then the French and the Spanish greatly enhanced their riches through the products of the whale that frequented the western coast of Europe. Whaling be- came a great European business in the seventeenth century. After the right or baleen whale was found in such great numbers by Henry Hudson in 1607 during his first voyage to Greenland and uninhabited islands of Spitzbergen, the center of whale-fishing was transferred to that region. A thousand or more were slaughtered there yearly for many years. Writing of this period in 1820, William Scoresby said that the whale-fishing ^'proved the most lucrative and most important branch of natural conunerce which had ever been offered to the industry of man.'^ In 1814 a Scotch whaler is reported to haye secured a catch valued at $102,840. Such rewards greatly stimulated the whaling in- dustry. "Killing the bird that lays the golden egg*' has never proved to be good business. The city of Smeerenburg in Spitzbergen, that grew to a population of 20,000 people in consequence of the whaling industry, was deserted when the whales were gone.

When the Pilgrim Fathers came to this country the whale was nu- merous along the coast of New England and became an important industry of some of the colonists. In 1846 the United States had a fleet of 680 whaling-vessels. More than $70,000,000 was then invested in this industry. Such slaughter naturally depleted the number of whales in the Atlantic Ocean. The whalers then found their way around the Horn to reap rich harvests in the Pacific. Scammon says in his "Marine Mammals'' that in the early fifties of the nineteenth century from 30,000 to 40,000 California or gray whales passed along the coast of California annually. These graceful creatures, forty or more feet in length, passed along the coast within observational distance from the shore between November and May. Large numbers of females came into the lagoons to bring forth their young. There the whalers took advantage of the affection of the mothers for their young to lead

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