On the Alaskan coast, and southward as far as Oregon, the Indians, and especially those of the Queen Charlotte Islands and the coasts of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, were accustomed, hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ago, to go far away into the ocean in their dug-out canoes, searching for and spearing the whales with lances made of flint or bone, having detachable barbed heads. These were attached to shafts by rawhide lines, and to the shafts were attached buoys of large inflated bladders. When the animal was struck, the heavy pole would drive the lancehead through the skin and then fall off. The barbs would not only hold the instrument there, but cause it to work deeper and deeper, and the whale, darting away or diving, would be so impeded by dragging the poles and buoys after him, that he would soon return to receive other darts, and so, between loss of blood and exhaustion, would ultimately be killed. It is extremely interesting to read the stories, gathered by early travelers from the lips of the Indians,—old Haidas or Makahs are living yet who have taken part in such nerve-testing canoe-chases,—of their fights with this gigantic foe far from land, and their hair’s-breadth escapes; and it is not strange that many quaint ceremonies were devised to placate the waters and the power of the whale-god in advance, and to honor the sea-hunters when they returned. The Greenlanders and Eastern Eskimos do not seem to have been able in their small skin boats to conquer the largest sort of whales, but the smaller ones, such as the white whale, fell to their spears in a similar way; and they took great pains to secure any dead or stranded cetacean that came within their reach, the bones of which were as valuable to them, in the absence of wood, as were the flesh, oil, and sinews.