| 708 With you I will commence a brief journal.
We landed on two of those islands, St. Nicholas and St. Jagoes: we saw some others, the most interesting of which was Fogo, or Foigo la Tera; in English it would be the land of fire. It has been a volcano, and has the appearance of a great sugar loaf sat in the broad ocean with its top far above the clouds. We left those islands the 19th of November and stood to the south; light winds and calms with very warm weather attended us till after we crossed the Equator; then we took strong south east trades; they carried us towards Brazil, we were near the island of Trinidad.
We had frequent opportunities of amusing ourselves at fishing for blackfish, porpoises, terbercores, skipjacks, and dolphins; the two first are of the whale species, the largest made two barrels of spermacetti [spermaceti].
On the 3d of January 1844, ( I will now extract from my journal,) "there they b-lo-w- and l-an-d h-o!" were both cried at the mast heads at once. Whales and the island of Tristan Acunha were seen at a look. It is in latitude 36 deg. south, longitude 15 deg. west.
Fourth day. It commenced blowing fresh last night and continued to increase, and this morning it blows the heaviest gale we have experienced since we left New Bedford. We are lying under fore spencer, the fore topmast staysail is blown away.
The islands of Tristan, Nightingale, and Inaccessible, are now all in sight, and the air is full of South Sea birds of all sizes, from the Albatross down to Mother Carey's Chickens; we amused ourselves at fishing for them: we caught five Albatross nearly of a size. We measured one of them while alive: his wings from tip to tip were ten feet four inches.
Tristan makes a good appearance; it is about the size and height of Monadnock mountain in Cheshire county New Hampshire.
Eighth day. To-day the boats caught a small whale, it made eighteen barrels of oil. While they were stripping off the blubber, the seafowls came around in great abundance and devoured the whale with great voracity, and as fearless as our domestic fowls. I prepared line and hook bated with blubber, and commenced fishing for them; in less than an hour I caught enough Albatross to afford me nine dozen of quills, by taking two and four out of a wing; then I let them go.
Thirteenth day. To-day we saw several large whales; the boats gave chase and harpooned a very large one and gave him a mortal wound. He ran to windward with great fury, and by some mismanagement the line parted and he got away; he dove under water and came up near the ship; we ran up into the foretop to have a better view. I could look down on him as he came to the top; he commenced lashing the water with his fins and tail, for he was frantic with the agony of his wounds, having two harpoons in him, they were bleeding with such profusion that the water was crimsoned some distance around. This with his bellowing and spouting presented an awful scene; the boats gave chase, but he saw them before they got near enough to harpoon him again.-He dove again and ran off to windward and got away; but we expect he died that night. As I stood gazing down on him, the words of Br. Hyrum came fresh to my mind when he pronounced upon my head my patriarchal blessing, "I guess you have got to go a whaling."
From there we shaped our course for Cape Good Hope. On the 21st we saw and caught a fine sea turtle; he was basking on the surface in a pleasant sunshine; his shell was about three feet long; he was very fat and we had a fine time on turtle soup.
Twenty sixth day. We struck soundings in 60 fathoms water, the weather rather misty; supposed we were about thirty miles south of the Cape. From there we steered for the island of St. Pauls. I had heard many reports respecting the multitude of excellent fish that are about this and another island near it, called Amsterdam. We prepared our hooks and lines a few days beforehand and arrived there on the 21st of February, in latitude 38 deg. south, longitude 77 deg. east. We ran in near the land and lowered three boats well manned for the sport. As we rowed in near shore, we saw large shoals of fish in compact bodies, with their backs out of water, feeding on something that was near the surface; we found it to be breet. It is an insect that abounds in those seas, and is called by whalemen right whale feed. It looks something like frog spawns and has a reddish appearance. It goes in veins of various widths, often extending as far as the eye can see, and so plenty as to give the water a reddish appearance. Whales and other fish live on it and get very fat. When near enough we made fast to the kelp, (a coarse kind of seaweed.)
I had the pleasure of catching the two first fish, but they soon began to gather in such multitudes that in a little while we filled our boats. We also took with us an iron hoop, netted within by ropeyarns, for catching crawfish; these are about the size and shape of lobsters, except the nipper claws; but better fish
(page 708) |
