New Bedford, Massachusetts; its history, industries, institutions and attractions (1889) (14775239564)

Identifier: newbedfordmassac00newb (find matches)
Title: New Bedford, Massachusetts; its history, industries, institutions and attractions
Year: 1889 (1880s)
Authors: New Bedford Board of Trade Pease, Zeph. W. (Zephaniah Walter), b. 1861 Hough, George A Sayer, William L. (William Lawton), 1848-1914
Subjects: New Bedford (Mass.)
Publisher: (New Bedford) Mercury publishing company, printers
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN



Text Appearing Before Image:
fit into a rebate sunk in the upper jaw. Thethroat is four feet thick, and is mainly blubber, interpenetrated byfibrous, muscular flesh. The lips and throat of a two-hundred-and- Hm >■ r—m
Text Appearing After Image:
PUBJJC ij^fuRTJ Mmiijjiii»» THE WHALE-FISHERY. 53 tifty-barrel whale should yield sixty barrels of oil, and, with the sup-porting jaw-bones, will weigh as much as twenty-five oxen of onethousand pounds each. Attached to the throat by a broad base isthe enormous tongue, the size of which can be better conceived bythe fact that twenty-five barrels of oil have been taken from one.Such a tongue v/ould equal in weight ten oxen. * * * The tailof such a whale is about twenty-five feet broad and six feet deep, andis considerably more forked than that of the spermaceti. The pointof juncture with the body is about four feet in diameter, the vertebraabout fifteen inches ; the remainder of the small being packed withrope-like tendons from the size of a finger to that of a mans leg.The great rounded joint at the base of the skull gleams like an ivorysphere, nearly as large round as a carriage wheel. Through thegreatest blood-vessels, more than a foot in diameter, surges, at eachpulsation of a he