e
exertion. One man being confined in the guard-house for having got
drunk and misbehaved, stamped on the ground, and roared to the guard,
"Let me out, or, damn your eyes, I'll knock a hole in your bottom,
scuttle your island, and send you all to hell together." Rocks and
shoals abound in almost every direction, but chiefly on the north and
west sides. They are, however, well-known to the native pilots, and
serve as a safeguard from nightly surprise or invasion.

Varieties of fish are found here, beautiful to the eye and delicious to
the taste: of these, the best is the red grouper. When on a calm, clear
day you glide among these lovely islands, in your boat, you seem to be
sailing over a submarine flower-garden, in which clumps of trees,
shrubs, flowers, and gravel walks, are planted in wild but regular
confusion.

My chief employment was afloat, and according to my usual habit, I found
no amusement unless it was attended with danger; and this propensity
found ample gratification in the whale fishery, the reason for which was
just approaching. The ferocity of the fish in these southern latitudes
appears to be increased, both from the heat of the climate and the care
of their young; for which reason it would seem that the risk in taking
them is greater than in the polar seas.

From what I am able to learn of the natural history of the whale, she
brings forth her young, seldom more than one at a time, in the northern
regions, after which, with the calf at her side, the mother seeks a more
genial climate, to bring it to maturity. They generally reach Bermuda
about the middle of March, where they remain but a few weeks, after
which they visit the West-India Islands, then bear away to the
southward, and go round Cape Horn, returning to the polar seas by the
Aleutian Islands and Behring's Straits, which they reach in the
following summer; when the young whale, having acquired size and
strength in the southern latitudes, is enabled to contend with his
enemies in the north, and here also the dam meets the male again. From
my own experience and the inquiries I have been enabled to make, I am
tolerably certain that this is a correct statement of the migration of
these animals, the females annually making the tour of the two great
American continents, attended by their young.

The maternal solicitude of the whale makes her a dangerous adversary,
and many serious accidents occur in the season for catching whales. On
o