Two men were now told off as "blubber-room men," whose duty it became to go below and, squeezing themselves in as best they could between the greasy mass of fat, cut it up into "horse-pieces" about eighteen inches long and six inches square. Doing this, they became perfectly saturated with oil, as if they had taken a bath in a tank of it; for as the vessel rolled it was impossible to maintain a footing, and every fall was upon blubber running with oil. A machine of wonderful construction had been erected on deck in a kind of shallow trough about six feet long by four feet wide and a foot deep. At some remote period of time it had no doubt been looked upon as a triumph of ingenuity, a patent mincing machine. Its action was somewhat like that of a chaff-cutter, except that the knife was not attached to the wheel, and only rose and fell, since it was not required to cut right through the "horse-pieces" with which it was fed. It will be readily understood that, in order to get the oil quickly out of the blubber, it needs to be sliced as thin as possible, but for convenience in handling the refuse (which is the only fuel used) it is not chopped up in small pieces, but every "horse-piece" is very deeply scored as it were, leaving a thin strip to hold the slices together. This, then, was the order of work: Two harpooners attended the try-pots, replenishing them with minced blubber from the hopper at the port side, and baling out the sufficiently boiled oil into the great cooling tank on the starboard. One officer superintended the mincing, another exercised a general supervision over all. So we toiled watch and watch, six hours on and six off, the work never ceasing for an instant night or day. Though the work was hard and dirty, and the discomfort of being so continually wet through with oil great, there was only one thing dangerous about the whole business. That was the job of filling and shifting the huge casks of oil. Some of these were of enormous size, containing three hundred and fifty gallons when full, and the work of moving them about the greasy deck of a rolling ship was attended with a terrible amount of risk. For only four men at most could get fair hold of a cask, and when she took it into her silly old hull to start rolling, just as we had got one halfway across the deck, with nothing to grip your feet, and the knowledge that one stumbling man would mean a sudden slide of the ton and a half weight, and a little heap of mangled corpses somewhere in the lee scuppers—well, one always wanted to be very thankful when the lashings were safely passed.
The whale being a small one, as before noted, the whole business was over within three days, and the decks scrubbed and rescrubbed until they had quite regained their normal whiteness. The oil was poured by means of a funnel and long canvas hose into the casks stowed in the ground tier at the bottom of the ship, and the gear, all carefully cleaned and neatly "stopped up," stowed snugly away below again.
SKETCH OF MANLY MILES.
To Dr. Manly Miles belongs the distinction of having been the first professor of practical agriculture in the United States, as he was appointed to that then newly instituted position in the Michigan Agricultural College in 1865.
Professor Miles was born in Homer, Cortland County, New York, July 20, 1826, the son of Manly Miles, a soldier of the Revolution; while his mother, Mary Cushman, was a lineal descendant of Miles Standish and Thomas Cushman, whose father, Joshua Cushman, joining the Mayflower colony at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1621, left him there with Governor Bradford when he returned to England.
When Manly, the son, was eleven years old, the family removed to Flint, Michigan, where he employed his time in farm work and the acquisition of knowledge, and later in teaching. He had a common-school education, and improved all the time he could spare from his regular occupations in reading and study. It is recorded of him in those days that he was always successful in whatever he undertook. In illustration of the skill and thoroughness with which he performed his tasks, his sister relates an incident of his sowing plaster for the first time, when his father expressed pleasure at his having distributed the lime so evenly and so well. It appears that he did not spare himself in doing the work, for so completely was he covered that he is said to have looked like a plaster cast, "with only his bright eyes shining through." A thrashing machine was brought on to the farm, and Manly and his brother went round thrashing for the neighbors. Industrious in study as well as in work, the boy never neglected his more prosaic duties to gratify his thirst for knowledge. He studied geometry while following the plow, drawing the problems on a shingle, which he tacked to the plow-beam. Whenever he was missed and inquiry was made about him, the answer invariably was, "Somewhere with a book." He was most interested in the natural sciences, particularly in chemistry in its applications to agriculture, and in comparative physiology and anatomy, and was a diligent student and collector of mollusks.
Choosing the profession of medicine, Mr. Miles was graduated M. D. from Rush Medical College, Chicago, in 1850, and practiced till 1859. In the meantime he became greatly interested in the subject of a geographical survey of the State, for which an act was passed and approved in 1858. In the organization of the survey, in 1859, he was appointed Assistant State Geologist in the department of zoölogy; and in the next year was appointed professor of zoölogy and animal physiology in the State Agricultural College at Lansing.
In his work as zoölogist to the State Geological Survey, in 1859, 1860, and 1861, he displayed rare qualities as a naturalist, so that Mr. Walter R. Barrows, in recording his death in the bulletin of the Michigan Ornithological Club, expresses regret that many of the years he afterward devoted to the development of experimental agriculture "were not spent in unraveling some of the important biological problems which the State afforded, which his skill and perseverance would surely have solved." He was a "born collector," Mr. Barrows adds, "as the phrase is, and his keen eyes, tireless industry, and mathematical precision led to the accumulation of thousands of valuable specimens and more valuable observations."
Mr. Bryant Walker, of Detroit, who knew Professor Miles well in later years, and had opportunity to review his zoölogical work, regards the part he took during this service in developing the knowledge of the fauna of the State as having been very prominent. "The catalogues he published in the report for 1860 have been the basis for all work since that time." He kept in correspondence with the most eminent American naturalists of the period, including Cope, Prime, Lea, W. G. Binney, Baird, and Agassiz, and supplied them with large quantities of valuable material. From the many letters written by these naturalists which are in the possession of his friends, we take, as illustrating the character of the service he rendered and of the trust they reposed in him, even previous to his going on the survey, one from Agassiz, of February 4, 1856: