Seen first in May in Bering Strait, the Bowheads
trend from here north and east, doubling back on their westward journey
in July and August, when the Herschel Island whalers go out to intercept
them. September sees the great mammals off Southern Kamchatka, and year
by year with regularity they follow this Arctic orbit, edging farther in
successive seasons to the north and east. The usual track of any family
of whales may be left at a tangent on account of a furious storm,
excessive cold, the want of food, the harassing of an enemy, or a change
in the season of their amours.
A whale, for an old party, is not so slow. Alarmed while extended
motionless at the surface of the sea, he can sink in five or six seconds
beyond the reach of human enemies. His velocity along the surface
horizontally, diving obliquely or perpendicularly, seems to be the same,
a rate of from twelve to fourteen miles an hour. Now, to carry a whale
of seventy-four tons through the Arctic at the rate of twelve miles an
hour would require a (sea) horse-power of one hundred and forty-five.
Captain Scoresby, a whale expert, by careful calculation estimates that
a surface of two square miles of the Arctic Ocean contains
23,888,000,000,000,000 of the minute animalculae on which the Bowhead
feeds, so we hope there is enough to go round.
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