United States or Mali ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There was a British vessel, the Barkright, that killed two bow-head whales in 1935, north of Melville Island, but since that time there hasn't been a whale seen in all the arctic waters. I have heard that said by sailors, and I have read about it. They have all been killed, and nothin' left of 'em but the skeletons that's in the museums." Mrs. Block shuddered.
He was thus conducted to the Bow-head, where they stopped a moment, at the pressing solicitation of some of the citizens, on the pretence that he might die peaceably, but really that time might be gained, as they expected the Welch Fusiliers every moment from the Canongate, or that the garrison of the Castle would come to Porteous' relief.
"In my father's time, there was mair search for silenced ministers about the Bow-head and the Covenant Close, and all the tents of Kedar, as they ca'd the dwellings o' the godly in those days, than there's now for thieves and vagabonds in the Laigh Calton and the back o' the Canongate. But that time's weel by, an it bide.
To think, Reuben, that I, wha hae been sae honoured and exalted in my youth, nay, when I was but a hafflins callant, and that hae borne testimony again the defections o' the times yearly, monthly, daily, hourly, minutely, striving and testifying with uplifted hand and voice, crying aloud, and sparing not, against all great national snares, as the nation-wasting and church-sinking abomination of union, toleration, and patronage, imposed by the last woman of that unhappy race of Stuarts; also against the infringements and invasions of the just powers of eldership, whereanent, I uttered my paper, called a 'Cry of an Howl in the Desert, printed at the Bow-head, and sold by all flying stationers in town and country and now "
With one voice they pronounced it "A 1," and in their opinion "fit to smash ice." The oldest captain shook my hand warmly when the breast-hooks were put in, declaring that he could see no reason why the Spray should not "cut in bow-head" yet off the coast of Greenland. The much-esteemed stem-piece was from the butt of the smartest kind of a pasture oak.
Should the evolutionist inform the villager that man did not at first stand in an erect position as at present, but went round on his hands and feet; that the sperm whale originated from an animal akin to the bear; and that other great changes have taken place among the various members of the animal kingdom, the Tigara man would again reply: "Yes, the earliest men did not have their lower extremities developed for walking; the Bow-head whale originated from an animal similar to the deer, while another member of the whale family, called the Killer, armed with large teeth instead of baleen, originated from an animal akin to the wolf; the deer of old was a hornless and carniverous animal, having teeth like those of the bear, its canines being quite long, and when it appeared in herds the earlier inhabitants were alarmed, as it used to attack and devour the people."
And he remembered that a godly Bow-head matron had been carried out of the Tolbooth church in a swoon, beyond the reach of brandy and burnt feathers, merely on hearing these fearful words, "It is enacted by the Lords spiritual and temporal," pronounced from a Scottish pulpit, in the proem to the Porteous Proclamation.
Several whales are well known. The Right is almost exterminated; but the Greenland, or Bow-head, is found along the edge of the ice in all Hudsonian waters. The Pollock is rare, and the Sperm, or Cachalot, as nearly exterminated as the Right.
"In my father's time, there was mair search for silenced ministers about the Bow-head and the Covenant Close, and all the tents of Kedar, as they ca'd the dwellings o' the godly in those days, than there's now for thieves and vagabonds in the Laigh Calton and the back o' the Canongate. But that time's weel by, an it bide.
Sperm-whales began gittin' scarce when I was a boy, and pretty soon there was nothin' left but bow-head or right whales, that tried to keep out of the way of human bein's by livin' far up North; but when they came to shootin' 'em with cannons which would carry three or four miles, the whale's day was up, and he got scarcer and scarcer, until he faded out altogether.
Word Of The Day