The teeth, however, which were considered very valuable, had been extracted by a white man and an Indian before any others had any knowledge of the whale. All difficulty having been settled, a company was then formed that commenced cutting the whale in pieces convenient for transportation to the try works. The sperm procured from the head was thought to be of great value for medicinal purposes. It was used both as an internal and external application; and such was the credulity of the people that they considered it a certain cure for all diseases; it was sought with avidity, and for a while was esteemed to be worth its weight in silver." "The first sperm whale taken by the Nantucket whalers was killed by Christopher Hussey. He was cruising near the shore for 'right' whales, and was blown off some distance from the land by a strong northerly wind, when he fell in with a school of that species of whale, and killed one, and brought it home. "At what date this adventure took place is not fully ascertained, but it is supposed that it was not far from 1712. This event imparted new life to the business, for they immediately began to build vessels, of about forty tons, to whale out in the 'deep,' as it was then called, to distinguish it from 'shore whaling.' They fitted three vessels for six weeks, carried a few hogsheads, sufficient to contain the blubber of one whale, and tried out the oil after they returned home. "In 1715, there were six vessels engaged in the whaling business, (all sloops, from thirty to forty tons burden each,) and which produced an income of nearly five thousand dollars."[G] As the enterprise increased, more capital was invested, larger vessels were built, longer voyages were undertaken, and new localities or grounds for whales were discovered. Fifty years later,--viz., from 1771 to 1775,--Massachusetts alone employed annually one hundred and eighty-three vessels in the North Atlantic Ocean, and one hundred and twenty-one vessels of larger burden in the South Atlantic Ocean. "Look at the manner," says Burke, (1774,) "in which the New England people carry on the whale fishery. While we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits; while we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold--that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the south. Falkland Island, which seems too remote and too romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting place to their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We learn that, while some draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue their gigantic game, along the coast of Brazil."