Jasper County Democrat, Volume 13, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 June 1910 — AMBERGRIS TREASURE. [ARTICLE]

AMBERGRIS TREASURE.

Painter’s Lucky Find Recalls Similar Exploits in Fact ind Fancy., The story of how a Manchester (N. H.) painter found in the St. Lawrence River a lump of grayish substance weighing thirty-eight pounds, and how he has discovered that the solid, fatty stuff is ambergris and is worth J 30,000, recalls the nearest thing to romance that ever entered into the lives of Gloucester and New Bedford whalers. in the old days when American whalers dared every sea. It was like a lottery. Once in a lifetime you might chance on, the decaying body of a whale. giving off an awful smell, and inside that whale'would be a fortune enough so that you would never have to go to sea again. Charles Reade, as far as we remember, is the only writer to introduce ambergris into fiction. In "Love Me Little, Love Me Long,” David tells Miss Fountain how "the skipper stuffed their noses and ears with cotton, steeped in aromatic vinegar, and they lighted short pipes and broached the brig upon the putrescent monster and grappled to it; and the skipper jumped on it and drove his spade (sharp steel) in behind the whale's side fins.” •It is a matter of record that not far from the Windward Islands a Yankee skipper in one of the best old whaling years did cut out of a whale 130 pounds of ambergris, which was sold for £SOO. The price quoted for many years was $6 an ounce. Ambergris is often found floating on the sea. particularly off the coast of Brazil and of Madagascar. The Bahamas send more than any' other source to market. The stuff is a secretion of the sperm whale which dies of the disease producing the perfume matter. Chemists find H hard to account for the fact that the smell of the dead whale is so horrible when the substance taken out is valuable only as a source of sweet smells. —Brooklyn Eagle.