[Illustration: Breeding Grounds of the Seals]
Within recent years, on other shores but this one, an innovation has
entered the whaling business. The modern plan is to have
shore-refineries and from these strategic bases to send out
strongly-built high-speed steamers to shoot detonating harpoons from a
cannon into the whale. Such methods are pursued with profit on
Newfoundland and Vancouver Island shores. The gun-harpoon, the invention
of Sven Foyn, a Norwegian, is furnished at the point with a contrivance
which, as it enters the whale, opens out anchor-like flukes which
clutch his vitals. Connected by a line to the whaling-steamer, the
harpoon holds the quarry until the whaler steams alongside, when the
"fish" is soon dispatched. A nozzle is attached to the harpoon-wound,
and hot air from the engine pumped into the "proposition" keeps it
afloat. The Vancouver Island station has bagged as many as five whales
in one day,--Cachalots, Humpbacks, and Sulphur-Bottoms.
The Eskimo say, "There is no part of a seal that is not good," and the
same applies to whales. Blubber and bone have their regular markets. The
viscera, scraps of fat and oddments tried out in fiery furnaces, appear
in the form of pungent snuff-like powder, a much-sought fertiliser.
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