The whaling towns were populated by women, children, and old men.

The talk of the street was of big catches and the prices of oil and bone.

The conversation in the shaded parlors, where sea-shells, coral, and the trophies of Pacific cruises were the chief ornaments, was of the distant husbands and sons, the perils they braved, and when they might be expected home.

The solid, square houses the whalemen built, stoutly timbered as though themselves ships, faced the ocean, and bore on their ridge-pole a railed platform called the bridge, whence the watchers could look far out to sea, scanning the horizon for the expected ship.

Lucky were they if she came into the harbor without half-masted flag or other sign of disaster.
The profits of the calling in its best days were great.