"BONE" BOUGHT WITH LIVES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 17, 13 February 1909, Page 3

"BONE" BOUGHT WITH LIVES.

The £2OOO paid at Dundee Hip other dnv for a tmi of whalebone is eonsidcrali'lv below last season's average prtv. the roasmi being that the American whalers have this year had a succession of good catches.. ~ ... Hut at what a sacrifice ol human lite. It has hecii estimated that for every whale killed leu men die. And this r*timnte i- probably 100 low, for along the coast of Xorlli America the Eskimos are being Curved to death owing lo the extermination of reindeer h.v *■■>'• whaler^. The mortality amongst the win es. ,„„,. j, considerable, and always has hern For two or three ships to disappear with all their crews h a single season is a commonplace. Sometimes Ihev are crushed amongst the lloc«. Al nlliVr times they will get hopelessly entangled in the "pack/' to he presenty ~„Ticd northward, into he sea o ecinal ice that surrounds the actual lo.e itself. „ . , , [,t 1870 no fewer than thirty vos,cl>, were frown in oh" Barrow Point, owing |„ „-inter setting in ™rl<or than usual. Some seventv men of the crews ahan.loned their to save their lives hut nothing was ever heard of any of them. The historv of whale-fishing in the \vctio teems witli Mich tragedies ' On the other hand, the profits are uiK.il occasion enormous, fn 1007 the riri" .Teannette. manned hy or, y five white men working on shares (the res were Eskimos engaged on the spot at fixed wages), caught no fewer than' eleven howhead whales, worth over £20."00. And even this is not a record, for cases have hecn known of single caWics numbering over a score of "fish,"