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He transacts without charge the trade in vegetables between the peasants and the whale-ships, guarantying the price to the producers, giving them the profits, if any, and taking the risk himself; and the only provision for pauperism is found in his charities.
They were the DIEGO RAMIREZ, of Nantucket; the CORONEL, of Providence, Rhode Island; and the GRAMPUS, of New Bedford. These were the first whale-ships we had yet seen, and it may be imagined how anxious we felt to meet men with whom we could compare notes and exchange yarns.
Answer me, didn't I? Didn't I say I wished you could have seen it when I first saw it? When you got up on your ear and called me names, and said I had brought you eleven miles to look at a sapling, didn't I explain to you that all the whale-ships in the North Seas had been wooding off of it for more than twenty-seven years? And did you s'pose the tree could last for-ever, con-found it?
Why it is that all Merchant-seamen, and also all Pirates and Man-of-War's men, and Slave-ship sailors, cherish such a scornful feeling towards Whale-ships; this is a question it would be hard to answer. Because, in the case of pirates, say, I should like to know whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about it.
Then, very, very slowly, she began to mend. A month more and then the Manhattan hove-to off the verdant hills and shining beaches of Rotumah Island. "You cannot do better than go ashore here," the captain had said to Adair a few hours before. "I know the natives well. They are a kind, amiable race of people, and many of the men, having sailed in whale-ships, can speak English.
The Diana's crew, a set of worthless outcasts, who had been picked up at the islands from the refuse of whale-ships, were all as drunk as beasts, and had a set-to, on the beach, with their captain, who was in no better state than themselves.
In those days there was no monotony of existence in these islands, ships were continually coming and going, and the islanders prospered exceedingly. When they increased beyond the capacity of the islands to entertain them, a portion migrated to the Cape, while many of the men took service in the whale-ships, for which they were eminently suited.
Then certain Southern privateers got lists of the New England whale-ships that were out, and lay in wait for them as whalers lie in wait for the leviathan. Prices of whale-oil soared like balloons. New England ships at home tied up close or else were pressed into government service. The high price of oil fanned the flame of speculation in Pennsylvania. Henry H. Rogers was twenty-one.
"We are always hearing of whale-ships being lost, and, somehow or other, we never hear of the crews being saved, as one reads of when ships are wrecked in the usual way on the seashore."
We saw a few sperm whales; but most of the whales that come upon the coast are fin-backs, hump-backs, and right-whales, which are more difficult to take, and are said not to give oil enough to pay for the trouble. For this reason whale-ships do not come upon the coast after them.
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