United States or Haiti ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Her husband looked at her darkly. "Don't blubber. What good does crying do? G ! if any thing happens in this world, a woman falls to crying her eyes out, as if that would help it." Boniface Newt was not usually affectionate. But there was almost a ferocity in his address at this moment which startled his wife into silence. His daughter May turned pale as she saw and heard her father.
Amid sighs and tears, the congratulations were received, and when at length Fred Pinckney found a moment to whisper in George Marshall's ear, he said, with characteristic drollery, "By Jupiter? I'll be glad when the coach comes. I can't stand so much crying; it's more like a funeral than a wedding. If they are obliged to blubber this way when a fellow marries, I think I shall back out."
Assuming the blubber to be the skin of the whale; then, when this skin, as in the case of a very large Sperm Whale, will yield the bulk of one hundred barrels of oil; and, when it is considered that, in quantity, or rather weight, that oil, in its expressed state, is only three fourths, and not the entire substance of the coat; some idea may hence be had of the enormousness of that animated mass, a mere part of whose mere integument yields such a lake of liquid as that.
They feed on mackerel and herring, devouring large quantities. Years ago the porpoise was a common and esteemed article of food in Great Britain and France, but now the skin and blubber only have a commercial value. The skins of a very large species are used for leather or boot-thongs.
With gaff-hooks to haul back the pieces, and short-handled spades for cutting, they worked in pairs, taking off square slabs of blubber about a hundredweight each. As soon as a piece was cut off, the pair tackled on to it, dragging it up to the pots, where the cooks hastily sliced it for boiling, interspersing their labours with attention to the simmering cauldrons.
Much as he regretted it, he was compelled to leave the precious load of walrus blubber behind, so as to carry Annadoah, who was unable to walk, on the sledge. He covered the blubber with cakes of ice, hopeful that it might by chance escape the ravaging bears. His companions might come for it after his return.
There she lay on her right side, a spot of dirty-white in a disordered patch of snow, with one little eye open, and her fierce-looking mouth also; and the cub lay across her haunch, biting into her rough fur. I set to work upon her, and allowed the dogs a glorious feed on the blubber, while I myself had a great banquet on the fresh meat.
But when the sailors showed disgust at this, they at once made a small fire of moss mingled with blubber, over which they half-cooked their food. Their mode of procuring fire was curious. Two small stones were taken one a piece of white quartz, the other a piece of iron-stone and struck together smartly.
The blubber is then cut from the fleshy side, and the skin is soaked for a short time in hot water, after which the hair is readily removed with an ood-loo, the semicircular knife that is the one constant and only tool of the Esquimau woman. A line is then made by cutting this piece of skin into one continuous strip, half an inch wide, by following around and around the band.
I knew that if all had gone well I should be a man high up in the Company, and here I was, living like a dog in the porch of the world, sometimes without other food for months than frozen fish; and for two years I was in a place where we had no fire, lived in a snow-house, with only blubber to eat. And so year after year, no word!" "The mail came once every year from the world?"
Word Of The Day