Excerpt from History of the American Whale Fishery From Its Earliest Inception to the Year 1876 The difficulties in the way of collection of historical notes increase greatly with the lapse of years. 'newspapers, which must always be considered, where they exist, inval uable aids in the prosecution of such matters, pass from the possession of the very few who, when living, treasured them, and fall into the hands of those who only value them at so many cents per pound. Those who were the actors in the scenes which it is desired to describe die, and with them perishes the source of the information, which ultimately, in the form of tradition, becomes too distorted to be available. In the matter of the whale-fishery still another formidable difficulty is met with, in the absence or destruction of customs-records. During the Revolution many ports were under Eu glish control, and very often with the departure of the British also departed the custom house papers. In other ports, notably New Bedford and Nantucket, these records have been destroyed by fire. Still again in yet other ports, notably Sag Harbor, mildew and decay have obliterated the writing. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.