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Whaling is done in three different ways: from canoes, from boats sent
off by sailing ships, and from steamers direct. The Indians whaled
from canoes before the white man came, and a few Indians, Eskimos, and
French Canadians are whaling from canoes to-day. Eskimos sometimes
attack a large whale in a single canoe, but oftener with a regular
flotilla of kayaks, and worry it to death; as the Indians once did with
bark canoes in the Gulf and lower St Lawrence. Modern canoe whaling is
done from a North-Shore wooden canoe of considerable size and weight
with a crew of two men. It is now chiefly carried on by a few French
Canadians living along the north shore of the lower St Lawrence. It is
not called whaling but porpoise-hunting, from the mistaken idea that
the little white whale is a porpoise, instead of the smallest kind of
whale, running up to over twenty feet in length. It is dangerous work
at best, and a good many men {165} are drowned. As a rule they are
very skilful, and they nearly always jab carefully while sitting down.
Sometimes, however, the rare occasion serves the rare harpooner, when
the whale and canoe appear as if about to meet each other straight
head-on. Then, in a flash, the man in the bow is up on his feet, with
the harpoon so poised that the rocking water, the mettlesome canoe, and
his watchful comrade in the stern, all form part of the concentrated
energy with which he brings his every faculty to a single point of
instantaneous action. There, for one fateful moment, he stands erect,
his whole tense body like the full-drawn bow before it speeds the arrow
home. He throws: and then, for some desperate minutes, it is often a
fight to a finish between the whale's life and his own.

The old wooden whaling vessel under mast and sail is almost extinct.
But it had a long and splendid career. The Basques, who were then the
models for the world, began in the Gulf before Jacques Cartier came;
and worked the St Lawrence with wonderful success as high as the basin
of Quebec. The French never whaled in Canada; but the 'Bluenose' Nova
Scotians did, and held their own against all comers. 'A dead whale or
a stove boat' {166} was the motto for every man who joined the chase.
Discipline was stern; and rightly so. A green hand was allowed one
show of funk; but that was all. However, there was very little funking
so long as Britishers, Bluenoses, and Yankees could pick their crews
from among the most