The first Bowhead taken from these waters went in 1891 to the American steam-whaler Grampus, her catch for three seasons being twenty-one whales.  Previous to this, even wise whale-men thought it useless to go “to the east’ard of P’int Barrow” for this big whale; since that date the catch in Canadian waters has been thirteen hundred and forty-five whales.  Ignoring the oil altogether and putting the “bone” (baleen) at two thousand pounds each whale and the value of it at five dollars a pound, both conservative figures, we find that thirteen and a half millions in whale-values have gone out of this Canadian sea-pasture the past twenty years, by the back-door route.

Are there as good fish in the sea as have come out of it?  Expert evidence differs.  Captain George B. Leavitt, of the Narwhal, in 1907 lowered twenty-two times without striking and yet went out with fifteen whales.  He says he saw that season more whales than any year previous, but that they are on the move east and north.

The general practice is for a ship to reach this water from San Francisco in the early summer; whale as long as the ice will permit; go into winter quarters at Herschel; get out of the ice as soon as possible next summer, probably the first week in July; whale as long as it can stay without getting nipped by the new ice of September; carry out its catch through Bering Strait to San Francisco as late as possible; dispose of the cargo; refit; return next season, and do it all over again.  The active whaling-season is restricted to eight or ten weeks, and every one on board a whaler from captain to galley-devil works on a lay.  The captain gets one-twelfth of the take, the first mate one twenty-second, the second mate one-thirtieth, the third mate one forty-fifth, the carpenter one seventy-fifth, the steward one eightieth, fore-mast sailors one eightieth, green hands one two-hundredth.  Engineers get about one hundred and twenty dollars a month straight.  It looks all right in the contract signed a year ago in a San Francisco waterfront dive, but it never works out as it looks on paper.  The A.B. overdraws from the slop-chest (often before the whale is caught) the vulgar-fraction which stands for his share of fat things, and you come across him possessed of the sulky mood which dining on dead horse (land or marine) induces in most of us.

A trade in fur also makes out by this Pacific-Arctic, Arctic-Pacific route.  We estimate that total products to the value of a million and a half find their way each year out of Canada in the ships of the whaling-fleet.  “The farther north the finer fur” is a recognised law.  The American ship brings flour, provisions, Krag-Jorgensen guns, ammunition, tea, trinkets to the Eskimo, and receive for these the choicest furs this continent produces.