ly, Oh! whip poor Will.

MODERN WHALING.

It is natural enough that the Norwegians should be the most expert
people in capturing whales. They live in their cold country up near the
best whaling-grounds in the world, except, perhaps, the regions about
the northern part of Alaska. For centuries the old Norsemen have been
good whalers and famous at throwing the harpoon, but it was left for a
famous, perhaps the most famous, whaler the world has known to discover
a weapon which made the old hand-thrown harpoon a back number. The man
was a Norwegian called Svend Foyn, and an account of his life would make
an interesting and exciting story of adventures, escapes, dangers, and
finally riches.

Old Svend, who died not long ago at an advanced age, was a cabin-boy
when he was eleven years old, and did not have enough money to keep him
ashore a month. He used to sail in different kinds of vessels in his
early days, keeping his eyes open, and watching to learn what there was
for a cabin-boy to learn. This was in 1820. Gradually, as he grew older,
he began to save a few krone here and there, and when he came ashore
after a long trip he would take as much of his wages as he could
possibly spare and put them in the bank at home in Joensberg. But it was
slow work, and he was little more than a cabin-boy in 1845, except that
he was thirty-six years old and had a neat little sum in the bank. Then
the idea came to him to buy a little vessel of his own, and try to make
for himself the profits he saw others making out of his own and other
men's services.

He scraped together all he had or could raise, and bought a brig, and in
a very short time he had made a big catch of seals in the north, and had
$20,000 in the bank, besides the brig in the water. Svend seems to have
had all the shrewdness for which Norwegians have long been famous, and
much of the daring and self-reliance of the same great race. For he
started in 1863, with a little steamer which he had bought, to the
whaling-grounds, and tried to harpoon whales.

This did not seem to succeed very well, and he made up his mind that
spearing whales with a harpoon thrown by the hand of man was a doubtful
thing. He went to work, therefore, to think of something more powerful
and more certain in its aim than a man's arm, with the result that he
invented a harpoon which was fired from a gun, and which carried along
with it a shell that exploded inside the whale's vitals and almos