The logbooks of whalers are of great value in preserving much of the history of whaling which cannot be gleaned from any other source. Logs kept on merchant ships recorded formal matters, such as the weather, the direction of the wind, the location of the vessel, the courses taken and the distances covered. The logs of the whalers contained all these matters and, in addition, accounts of the whales attacked and captured, the bone taken, the oil stowed down, strange occurrences on the deep, such as battles with whales and deliverances from death, the places visited, the happenings on ship and on shore, items of a personal nature, sums in arithmetic, attempts at poetry, pictures of the whales captured or lost, pen-and-ink sketches and often colored drawings, and illustrations representing scenes in the life of the whaleman. The pictures of the whales alluded to were sometimes drawn with a pen, but generally were impressed by means of a stamp, which in early years was carved from wood by the men, and was later made of rubber. The impression was made on the margin of the page, and, if the whale were captured and boiled down, the number of barrels of oil obtained was written on a little white spot purposely left at about the middle of the picture. In running down the margins of the pages, one could easily determine how many whales were taken, how many escaped and the amount of oil each whale yielded. Black ink was not always used. Occasionally the impression was in blue, and the whale’s last agony was shown by a scarlet stream pouring from his blowhole. Open the logbook of an old merchant ship and there is nothing to interest, amuse or instruct, but the logs of the old whalers, now in the possession of the New Bedford Public Library and of the Dartmouth Historical Society, are as interesting as story books, and are, indeed, story books themselves. If the log book of the _Seabird_ was deposited in one of these repositories, one will find this entry made by Lakeum after the capture of the cachalot which yielded the ambergris—“This day we took a golden whale.” One would think that it was the duty of the first mate to keep the logbook, but on a whaler others were permitted to ventilate on its pages their joys or woes. One of the most amusing entries was the following, made by the steward of the _Mystic_, sent on a cruise for sea-elephant oil in 1843. How dear to this heart are the scenes of past days, When fond recollection recalls them to mind, The schooner so taut and so trim like a miss in her stays, And her light rigging which swayed to the wind— The old-fashioned galley, the try-works close by it, The old blubber-boat with six oars to pull it. The bunk of my messmate, the wooden chest nigh it, The old monkey jacket, the often-patched jacket, The greasy old jacket which hung up beside it.