We had now been gone nearly a year from New Bedford, and the prevailing thought with me was that some sorrow might have visited my distant home. I opened my mother’s letter with trembling hands; and it was a mother’s letter, just such a one as a mother writes to her son. All were well, there had been no sickness, she had remembered me in her prayers, she had all confidence in the correctness of my habits, she hoped that I was in excellent health, home was not home without me, it seemed many years since my departure, and only my return would restore her happiness. I opened my father’s letter without foreboding, for my mother had told me that all was well. It was a father’s letter, just such a letter as a father writes to his son. He hoped that I was diligent and dutiful as a sailor, that my habits were correct, that I was in good health and that I would have little from the slop chest, as they had given me an outfit which cost a good deal of money. He declared that, if people saved when they were young, they would keep on saving during life, that he wanted me so to conduct myself that there would be something coming to me at the end of the voyage, and, if there was, that he wouldn’t claim it, although I was a minor, but would allow me to deposit it in the savings bank in my own name. After receiving our recruits in the afternoon, we weighed anchor and set sail for the north. The old whaling habit of cruising slowly and shortening sail at night was now abandoned. We crowded on sail and made for the Arctic with all possible speed. As we approached the Aleutian Islands, the weather grew colder, and the men began to look to the slop chest. I noticed that Ohoo called for the warmest outfit, and the poor fellow needed it. And now a few words about bowheads. It wasn’t until 1843 that whalemen began to know anything about these whales. Indeed, before that time, they were ignorant that the right whale had this great brother. Their haunts were in the North Pacific and in the Arctic Sea. In the year named, a whaler for the first time visited the Okhotsk Sea and found and captured bowheads. Soon after they were discovered and taken off Alaska on what was called the Kodiak ground; and in 1847 a whaler named the _Superior_ entered Bering Strait. It was learned that, during the severe winter weather, these whales largely visited these two grounds in the North Pacific and then in June and July, as the lower Arctic became more or less free from ice, passed through Bering Strait for their summer sojourn. As more and more whalers visited the North Atlantic and the Arctic, the bowheads became more shy and went farther north. The whalers which pursued them were thus drawn into places where there was great danger from ice; and eleven years from the time of our story came the great disaster which even now bears the name of “Whalers Crushed by Ice.”