Increased Length of Whaling Voyages.--Capital.--Value of Oils and Bone.--Value of several Classes of Whaling Vessels.--"Lay." --Boat's Crew.--Whaleboats.--Approaching a Whale.-- Harpooning.--Whale Warp.--Danger when the Line runs out.-- Locomotive Power of the Whale.--Lancing.--Flurry.--Cutting in.--Boiling out.--The "Case and Junk."--The Rapidity with which Oil may be taken. The voyages of all classes of whalemen are much longer and more tedious now than formerly. Whales are more scarce, more easily frightened; they change their grounds or haunts oftener; and besides, the number of vessels engaged in their capture, in all seas, is largely increased, compared with the number twenty years since, or even later. [Illustration: HARPOONING A WHALE.] More capital is now employed in this enterprise than ever before; and, were it not for the greatly advanced prices of oils and bone beyond what they were a few years ago,--taking into account the scarcity of whales, the long time occupied on a voyage, the augmented expense of fitting out ships, in the high prices of provisions and other incidentals,--the enterprise could hardly be sustained a single year; and certainly but a few years. Immense losses would pervade all departments of this wide-spread system of commercial operation. A few years since, the price of _sperm_ oil by the quantity was only _fifty_ to _seventy-five_ cents per gallon; but now it brings _one dollar_ and _forty cents_ per gallon by the cargo. Right whale oil was formerly sold as low as _twenty-five_ cents per gallon by the cargo; but now it brings in the market _seventy_ and _eighty_ cents per gallon by the quantity. Whalebone, which formerly was sold as low as _six cents_ per pound,--and almost a drug at that,--in consequence of the increased demand for it, and the various and _extraordinary_ uses to which it is applied, now readily commands _eighty_ cents per pound. Thus a cargo of three thousand barrels of sperm oil, at the present market value of the article, will amount to more than one hundred and thirty thousand dollars. A cargo of three thousand barrels of right whale oil, including the bone, will command in the market, as their value now is, more than ninety thousand dollars; a _ship_ of four hundred tons burden, fitted for a whaling voyage, may be estimated to be worth from thirty to sixty thousand dollars; a _bark_ of three hundred tons, valued from twenty-five to forty-five thousand dollars; a _brig_ of two hundred tons, valued from fifteen to twenty-five thousand dollars; a _schooner_, valued from eight to twelve thousand dollars. A vessel owned by a number of persons, or a company, is usually divided into halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths, thirty-seconds, sixty-fourths, &c.