of us may think we see the day, not so far distant, when Rorquals of payable bulk will be as scarce as the mighty Mysticetus of the far North.

In 1890 Captain Cook began an acquaintance with the Arctic which was to extend over sixteen years, to be productive of, on the whole, more pains than profits, and to close on the very brink of disaster. Apart altogether from its interest of whales and whaling, the reader will be glad that this book has been written. It is a revelation, quite unwitting, of a strong man's fine character, a matter-of-fact record of duties faithfully done, disappointments faced, difficulties overcome, hardships endured, self-sacrifice. Not a phrase is touched with smugness. Truth shines on the unpolished sentence. This captain can, when needs must, knock a bigger man down; and we are satisfied that the fellow deserved it; he can, just as readily, take an injured whaleman into his own cabin and successfully treat and nurse him for a bad compound fracture, remarking afterwards: 'It is when one is called upon to do such jobs as this that one feels how incompetent he really is.'

On a later occasion, along with the skippers of two neighbouring ships fast in the ice, he takes part in the amputation, as a last resort, of an arm an inch below the shoulder joint, and, after the man is out of danger, observes: What a load was lifted off my mind to think that we were able to save his life!' There have been whaling skippers who-if one must believe all one reads-were bullies, brutes, and abandoned blackguards, whose histories would make mighty exciting 'pictures'; but the glimpse of that vital surgical operation, the arm had been frightfully shattered, three days before, by the accidental discharge of a gun at close quarters-performed by those amateurs under conditions as unfavourable to them as to the patient, is worth many reels of 'sensations." In case a surgeon should read this, let me mention a few details. They began by giving the patient a good stiff glass of whisky, promising him, by way of encouragement, another of the same, as soon as he awoke. We reasoned among ourselves that the whisky would stimulate the action of the heart, thereby lessening the danger caused by the chloroform.' They administered the anaesthetic from a

handful of the engineer's cotton waste stuck in a funnel formed of an old newspaper. The 'tools' were put in a bag and boiled, then laid in a solution of corrosive sublimate. A watch was hung by a string from the cabin ceiling, so that the anaesthetist might time the pulsations of the patient's heart. A tourniquet was adjusted as near the shoulders as possible. The cutting was begun. Presently they were confronted with a dire state of things-'black powder, fragments of deerskin shirt and shattered bone, some of them driven way up on top of the shoulder..

Oh, the length of time it took to get them all out!' But they carried on, working with the unfamiliar saw, forceps, catgut, and caustic silver; cleansed the wound and with a file smoothed the edges of the sawn bone, lest they should irritate the flesh, and finally sewed up the flap. From start to finish the job had taken one hundred and ten minutes. You can see-can you not?-those three strong, weatherbeaten men, when it is all over, glancing at one another with fearful eyes, wiping their sweating foreheads; you can hear them mutter, 'My God!'

On his earlier voyages to the Arctic Captain Cook met with mixed fortunes. On his first his ship was set on fire by a pair of disgruntled rascals, and twice boats were smashed by whales, two men being killed, one crippled for life, and several injured. This season, however, yielded a catch of nine Right whales, which gave nine hundred barrels of oil and ten thousand pounds of whalebone; and as whalebone was then fetching about five dollars a pound, the venture may be said to have closed with a fair profit. The record catch of a single ship for that season-July to October-was thirty whales, but one does not read these records without learning how seldom the catch numbered as many as ten, how often it did not exceed five-six ships in the same season had only thirteen whales between them-and how exceedingly precarious, in the economic sense, the whole business was. Indeed, those days were witnessing the beginning of the end of Arctic whaling as a national industry, both of America and of our own country. Apart from the decreasing numbers of the whales, the discovery of substitutes for whalebone, which at one time had commanded 3000l. a ton-a weight obtainable from the jaws Vol. 249.-No. 493,

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of two not notably large bowheads'-was soon to turn a share in an Arctic whaleship from a highly speculative investment into a definitely unprofitable one. Mr Keble Chatterton tells us how the 'Wanderer,' the last Americanowned whaler to sail on a whaling cruise, came to grief on the rocks in 1924, and it is years since I saw the last of the Scottish whalers in the dock at Dundee.

Incidentally, we may wonder whether the remnant of that race of monsters may not already, in the peace that has fallen after the persecution of three hundred years, have begun to replenish those ice-bound seas; for to say, as has been said, that the great Arctic whale is extinct, must surely be an 'exaggerated' way of putting it. So lately as 1906, according to Captain Cook, many whales were sighted, though few were captured, and it is hardly reasonable to assume that within twenty years, and under happier conditions, the whole species has perished. Of all creatures this whale of the Arctic is the most extraordinary. While he does not exceed seventy feet in length, his bulk is enormous; his head, measuring a third of his body, carries within, suspended from the roof of the jaw, most delicately arranged, several hundred feathery-edged blades of baleen (whalebone), 10 to 13 feet long, and weighing all told from 1000 to 2200 pounds; yet he is fitted to subsist only on tiny shrimp-like things floating in masses in the chill waters. Ungainly, unwieldy he looks, and in some ways is, but many a boat has he, knowingly, or otherwise, flipped to flinders, many a man slain, or broken, with the flourish of his tremendous flukes. Without the vice of the Sperm Whale and the pace of the Rorqual, he is, until attacked, timid and, it may be, nervous. This suggestion of 'nerves' in seventy or eighty tons of life and strength may seem absurd, but it is not offered as an invitation to smile. The alighting of a small bird on his back has been observed, says an older writer, to throw him into a panic, and another of the older writers-Scoresby, was it ?—had a tale to tell on the point. The whale was lying at the surface, possibly napping-if whales do nap, and, as animals, why shouldn't they?-and the boat came within an inch of contact, without disturbing him. On a daft impulse one of the crew, with the flat of his hand, dealt the black hide a sounding wallop. Ere the har

pooner could let fly, a shudder ran along the flank-and all was over. Some one may exclaim: 'Mere coincidence! The whale was struck at the instant, as it chanced, of his heart's last beat. He was already a dead whale.' Yet I have never heard a whaleman say so. Many of my Norwegian friends have been frankly unbelieving of the whole affair; a few have allowed the possibility. None of them, however, had ever seen a dead whalethat is, a whale which had died from natural causesmuch less witnessed such a death. Any stray carcase they had encountered on the high seas had borne evidence of violence: harpoons trailing broken lines, wounds caused by collisions with ships (rare), or lacerations and incisions inflicted by the ferocious Killer and Thresher. One old gunner, indeed, declared his strong belief that no man had ever seen the body of a whale that had died, so to speak, in his bed; and when I asked: What about the carcases not so seldom found on the beach, often in apparently good and healthy condition?' he replied: If there had been no collision-and a collision might leave less outward show than you think-then either the whale has been scared ashore, or he has blundered there, maybe after food, on an ebbing tide.' I was considering this when my friend continued: 'The whale has his old age-maybe three hundred yearsand his diseases, just like you and me; but he knows when he is going to die, and like the elephant, as I have heard tell, he wishes to be alone. And so he goes down into the deeps, or under the ice, and he dies. And the sharks and squids and other hungry things attend to his funeral, and no man sees him any more.' Well, I must leave it at that.

Through conscientious, artless repetition Captain Cook in his narrative conveys, as no practised writer would convey, an understanding of the dreariness, the disappointments, and the exasperations of Arctic whaling. 'July 14, we lowered boats for a whale, but lost run of him among the ice-floes.' 'Aug. 2, at 5 p.m., we lowered five boats for a small whale, but the boats came back at noon (next day) without being able to get near him.' 'Aug. 3, after thick snow-storm, we lowered boatswithout success,' Aug. 6, we lowered boats, but the whales went in among the ice-fields, where it was

impossible to follow.' 'Aug. 7, we lowered boats... but got nothing.' 'Aug. 17, at 3 a.m., we lowered six boats; at 6 a.m. the port bow boat succeeded in harpooning one -our first whale for the season.' During the five remaining weeks of that season they lowered on fourteen occasions-nothing is said of the toils of the chase-and got four whales. Then, in company of nine other unprosperous ships, they went into ice-quarters to spend a second winter away from home.

They made the best of a bad job, those skippers. Several of them, including our Captain, had their wives with them, and it was a friendly community, with normal social instincts and activities. Oct. 15, Captain Sherman, of the "Beluga," gave a birthday party, it being his son Bertie's fifth birthday. The dance and supper were largely attended and enjoyed by all.' 'Nov. 10, all were invited to a banquet given by Captain Wing, of the "Karluk," at 7 p.m.' 'Nov. 15, with the thermometer 20° below zero and a snowstorm, in the evening all went to see a theatrical company perform aboard the "Beluga.' 'Dec. 1, a large attendance at divine service.' 'Dec. 25, Christmas Day, thermometer 42° below zero.' 'Jan 1, all the captains and officers called on the different ladies.' 'Jan. 20, surprise party on board the "Beluga," to celebrate Mrs Porter's birthday, she being thirty-one years old. Whist till 10 p.m., when we sat down to a substantial supper of everything that could be found. In the midst of it, a native came in and reported that some of our men had stolen firearms, dogs and sleds, and deserted.' The deserters, by the way, were glad to be caught. Thus, in spite of accidents, illness, a death, also a birth, they kept up their spirits throughout the winter darkness and till July, when the ships escaped from the ice. Followed another poor season, and on Nov. 3, 1896, Captain Cook reached home, after a cruise of nearly thirty months.

During the next eight years he made voyages with fortunes as varied as the adventures; but I must now pass on to his account of that cruise which was destined to be his last in the Arctic. On March 18, 1903, the steam-bark 'Bowhead,' refitted with everything necessary for spending two summers and a winter in the North, sailed out of San Francisco. This time Mrs Cook,