WILLIAM B. WHITECAR, JR. PHILADELPHIA, July 26th, 1859. FOUR YEARS ABOARD THE WHALESHIP. CHAPTER I. In June, 1855, having decided upon embarking on a whaling voyage, I took the steamboat from Philadelphia to Tacony, thence by railway to New York, where, after a delay of a few hours, I boarded the steamer Metropolis, and after a fine run of twelve hours, landed in Fall River; there I entered the cars, and at five o’clock of the morning of June 20, I took up my quarters in the city of New Bedford. I immediately instituted inquiries as to the preliminaries attendant on the preparation for such a voyage. I soon acquired this information, and was consigned to the tender mercies of one of that class known by seafaring men as Land-sharks, a description of whom I shall attempt hereafter. This person treated me with much urbanity, desiring me to leave my hotel to reside at a hoarding-house of his selection, stating to me at the same time that numbers of whalemen, outward and homeward bound, were located there. My suspicions were slightly aroused regarding the accommodations of this boarding-house, by the earnestness with which he urged my locating in it; but no other inducement was requisite for me to coincide with his wishes than the one he last named; I being desirous, before going afloat, to mingle and converse with the initiated, to learn, if possible, something concerning the profession in which I was about to embark. So, without more ado, I proceeded to this domicile, which was located on South Water Street. It was kept by a widow lady, who, for the moderate sum of four dollars per week, for each, furnished just such edibles as you do not get at the Girard, in Philadelphia, or the Metropolitan, in New York. The meat was, in nine cases out of ten, salted; she wishing, in the abundance of her forethought, to render the salt junk, which she knew would form the principal article of our diet when at sea, agreeable to our palates; or, on the other hand, desiring to give us a predisposition to scurvy ere yet we were aboard ship. These motives were variously assigned by we tyros as the cause for the over-proportion of the saline in our food; as for those who had been at sea before, they appeared to relish the old lady’s corned pork and beef, and if we made any remark to them in reference to its profusion, they would answer us pertinently, “You will eat worse grub than that, old fellow, before you have done with whaling;” and these prophetic words ofttimes recurred to my memory months, ay, years, afterward. Do not think, kind reader, that I was rendered fastidious by former indulgence; far from it. I had made up my mind to a change of diet, but not to so great a one; for in the four weeks that I remained in this house, we never had but one meal of fresh meat--it was fried beefsteak; and even that the cook and a supernumerary, who had been engaged to assist him, with the aid of a