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Updated: June 1, 2025
In eight or ten days he will eat enough to form from five to eight inches of fat over his whole body. "The facility with which he thus grows fat is explained," says the Abbé Casgrain, "by the easy assimilation of such food and by the considerable development of his digestive apparatus." No doubt the beluga enjoys himself hugely. But Nemesis awaits him.
The oil of each beluga was worth £5 and the skin £1. Nairne's own share in a single year from this source of revenue was £70, but even then the industry was declining. We have Nairne's statement of income in 1798 and it indicates simple living at Malbaie.
The beluga is peculiar to northern regions where the water is cold: when one is seen at the mouth of an English river it is a subject of special note. There are numbers in Hudson Bay and they have been found in the Yukon River, it is said, 700 miles from its mouth, whither they went no doubt after salmon or other fish.
As opportunity offers the spear is used and, driven home by a strong hand, it sometimes goes clear through the body. A skilful man will quickly strike some vital spot; otherwise the beluga struggles long.
N.B. Never be ashamed to ask questions at any of your Brother Officers in order to gain information. The Sergeants of your Company will furnish you with any Rolls, Lists or Returns you may have occasion for respecting the Regt. The so-called "porpoise" of the St. Lawrence is in reality the French marsouin, the English beluga, a word of Russian origin, signifying white.
There is a considerable point at the mouth of the little Rivière Ouelle. The wide beach, bare at low water, and this point furnish an admirable combination for the beluga fishery. At high tide the beluga comes rushing in near to shore after his prey, sometimes in water so shallow that his whole body comes into view.
Are these cetacea peculiar to the great rivers of South America, like the manatee, which, according to Cuvier, is also a fresh water cetaceous animal? or must we admit that they go up from the sea against the current, as the beluga sometimes does in the rivers of Asia?
The weir or fishery for the beluga must be on a large scale and is expensive to keep up; it is for this reason that when the number of these creatures declined it was no longer possible to maintain the fishery at Pointe au Pic. At Rivière Ouelle annually more than 7000 stakes, from 18 to 20 feet long, are necessary to keep in repair the fishery which is almost entirely destroyed each year by ice.
The Beluga is a toothed whale, in contradistinction to those that are supplied with the whalebone-like arrangement that characterizes the right whales: consequently its food consists of fish and perhaps squid. To enable it to capture such prey it must be endowed with remarkable powers of speed.
The harpooned beluga will make off at full speed dragging in his wake the assailant's boat which flies over the face of the water, boiling with the mighty strokes of the monster's tail. Soon the water is red for each beluga sheds eight or ten gallons of blood. When he is tired the boat is drawn in closer by the rope fastened to the animal.
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