A trick, a hoax. Rare.
1848. It was ’bout daylight next mornin when we got to Stunnington, in Connecticut, whar they say the peeple live on fish so much that they smell like whale oil and have scales on their backs. This may be a bug what they put on me, but one thing I do know—and that is that they is great whalers, for they whaled the British out of ther harbor in the last war, a monstrous sight quicker than they cum in.—W. T. Thompson, ‘Major Jones’s Sketches of Travel,’ p. 126 (Phila.).
