Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/239

 London. I saw the statement in print recently that the Argentine Republic, in South America, exports more corn than the United States. We raise much more corn than Argentine, but use most of it, whereas Argentine uses very little This afternoon, in spite of the rain, we visited a steam whaling-ship lying in the harbor. Twenty similar vessels make headquarters in Durban, and the whales caught are converted into oil in six factories located on the sea-*shore, at a point so distant that the smell is not objectionable to the town-people. All whales caught are brought into Durban harbor; then loaded on flat cars, and sent down to the factories In 1911, the luckiest boat in the Durban whaling-fleet caught two hundred whales; in 1912, the lucky boat caught only one hundred. The boat with the least luck caught only sixty in 1912, as whales are becoming scarcer. Last month, the boat I visited caught only one whale; the month before eight—three of the eight were caught in one day. In certain whaling-grounds off the coast of South America, fourteen whales have been caught in one day by one ship. A fifty-six foot sperm whale is said to be worth $1,750. The stock of the local whaling-companies is quoted every day by the Durban papers, and the best of them pay big dividends The whaler I visited is a seventy-ton affair, a small ship compared with the 10,000 tons of the "Anchises." The captain of the whaler showed us about, and he looked like a carpenter or other mechanic who calls at your house to do a job of work. But he is compelled to understand navigation as well as the captain of a liner, and pass the same examination. He brought the