When the people first settled on Long Island, there were a great many whales in the sea. Sometimes these whales would run into bays and other shallow places. When the tide went out, the whale would be left without water enough to swim in. Sometimes he found himself lying on the dry ground. Before the white people came, the Long Island Indians used to kill whales stranded in this way, with spears. The Indians used the fat of the whale for food. The white people killed them, and got the oil out of the fat by boiling. This oil they sold for lamp oil. Finding that much money could be made by selling whale oil, the people on Long Island fitted up boats, which they kept always ready along the seashore. Whenever anybody saw a whale, the boatmen ran to their boats, and rowed out to kill it. They did not yet know how to go out to sea in whaling ships as some people in Europe did. After a while the Long Island people learned to take their small boats out to sea for miles to look for whales. This way of killing the whales spread from Long Island to Connecticut, and from there to Cape Cod. The people on the island of Nantucket had also learned to kill the whales that came into shallow water. They got a man to come out from Cape Cod to show them how to go out in boats and kill whales along the coast. After a while they built small ships in which they went to sea to seek for whales, but they brought the fat on shore in order to get the oil out of it. In 1718 the people on this island began to build ships with great kettles in them for rendering the oil on board the ships. The brave Nantucket men, and the men on the coast near by, soon began to send their ships into very distant seas. Some of them sailed among the icebergs in the Arctic regions; others went to the Southern Ocean; and some of the Nantucket and Cape Cod ships went round Cape Horn into the Pacific Ocean. The hardy whalemen ran great risks during their long voyages, but, if they were fortunate in killing whales, they made a good deal of money. There are still whaling vessels in our times, but not so many as there used to be. We do not need whale oil so much, because we have kerosene, gaslights, and electric lights. There are not so many whales to be found as there used to be.