whale, and they will not be shocked when we remind them, that the old Udaller, the father of the musing Minna, and the lively Brenda, was a whaler. In those Northern regions, when the season returns, an interest is manifested in enterprises of this nature, as though existence itself depended on the issue. At this we need not wonder. The flesh of the whale, which resembles coarse beef, is a necessary article of food. It affords a thin transparent substance, which answers the purpose of window glass, and the sinews, when properly separated, are used for thread. The common bones are employed in building the hut, the whalebone in finishing canoes and rude instruments, and the remainder is no despicable material for fuel. Besides, train oil and oleaginous matter of all kinds, are more grateful to the taste of the natives of these regions, than the choicest delicacies to a refined people. The reindeer is no greater blessing to the Laplander, nor does the palm supply to the native of the tropical clime, a greater variety for his comfort and support, than does the whale to these Northern tribes. When, after being immured in the depths of winter for nine or ten months in the year, they at length emerge from the tombs of the living, the utmost activity is often displayed in preparation for a fishing voyage; and when all is ready, mothers and children, and old men, gather on the shore at the parting. When the seamen return, after an interval of many days, laden with the fruits of their successful but desperate exertion, transport is visible in the actions and visages of all, no less heartfelt and expressive, than that which was demonstrated by the bells of Lerwick when Parry returned in safety from one of his perilous but brilliant voyages.

The Biscayans appear to have been the first Europeans, who systematically and extensively pursued the whale fishery. The Northmen, who, after a long career of ravage and plunder, at length settled along the western shores of Europe, are said to have introduced it. The same descriptions of whale gear and instruments are now used, that were employed by the Biscayans in the fifteenth century, and the same methods of capture are practised. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, they became bold and adventurous, and straying as far as the coast of Iceland, they found there a Norwegian colony, disposed to unite in their enterprises. Their fleet soon numbered fifty or sixty sail of vessels.

Before the enthusiasm first roused by the brilliant successes of Columbus had subsided, the Dutch and English made many most calamitous attempts to reach the Indies by a northeast passage. In penetrating those icy regions, they met with vast numbers of whales,-undisturbed for centuries in their peculiar and exclusive seas, tame, sluggish, and disposed to yield as ready captives to the intruder. The navigators determined to unite profit with adventure, and although they might fail in obtaining, by their imagined passage, the spices of India, to bring home at least in their vessels the products of the bear, the walrus, the seal and the whale. From being only the incidental, these soon became the principal objects of these hazardous voyages, and the high hopes of men, panting for the lofty names of discoverers, were merged in the arduous toils of catching whales for profit.

The subject does not seem to have assumed any great commercial importance, till the seventeenth century. The first voyage, made for the sole purpose of whale fishing by the English, was about the year 1610. An Amsterdam and a London company soon sent out numerous fleets to Spitzbergen. Other nations of Europe commenced also at the same time. As each nation claimed the right to the whale grounds, frequent contests for sole possession rendered the voyages profitless and disastrous. The ships went out in small squadrons, and had all the necessary naval preparations for plunder or defence. The English especially assumed quite a piratical character, and relied more upon the plunder of the interlopers, as they called the rest, than on their own honest and watchful exertions. After many years of silly and obstinate contention, an arrangement was made, by which the most eligible seas along the coast of Spitzbergen were divided among the English, Dutch, Hamburghers, French and Spaniards.

* In the library of the Antiquarian Society at Worcester, is a MS. narrative of one of these voyages, entitled 'A short discourse of a Voyage made in the year of our Lord 1613, to the late discovered countrye of Greenland, and a briefe description of the same countrie, and the comodities ther raised to the adventurers.' The expedition was commanded by Benjamin Joseph of London, who is dignified as 'chief captaine.' In one place the three highest in command are called 'Admirall,' ' Vice Admirall' and 'rere Admirall.' The fleet consisted of seven armed ships, provided with '24 Basks,' (Basques, Biscayans,) 'who were best experienced in that facultie of whale striking.' During the voyage, the fleet met with about twenty-five sail of vessels.

Subsequently to this division, the English Muscovy Company pursued the business successfully for a few years, but after a time their fleets gradually disappeared, and they finally deserted the northern oceans. A spell seems to have been cast upon all their operations; for while they were unfortunate year after year successively, the economical and calculating Dutch were annually rewarded with rich cargoes. They were obliged to renounce the business to these formidable rivals, who carried it forward with the same vigor and perseverance which they had displayed in all other commercial enterprises. At first, on their portion of the shores, the Dutch found the whales inert, passive and abundant. They formed a summer colony on the shore, for the purpose of extracting and preparing the oil from the blubber which the vessels brought in. Here, on the snowy waste, the little village of Smeerenberg relieved the dull monotony of death. A sight unseen before, the curling of smoke and the ringing of bells announced that man had taken possession, where nature had seemed to threaten a total extinction of animal existence. During the whole of the seventeenth century, the business gradually extended, and two hundred vessels, of various kinds and sizes, were frequently floating in the harbor of Smeerenberg. At length the whales became shy and intractable, and it was found necessary to push out into the open sea, and there engage in the fearful encounter. As they advanced into the open ocean, the scene of their toil became nearly as distant from their colony as from home, and they at length deemed it expedient to relinquish the intermediate station, and return with their cargoes directly to Holland. Not a vestige of this village is now to be seen.

It would be tedious and uninstructive, to follow in slow detail the fluctuations of this precarious business. Suffice it to say, that for more than a hundred years, the English hardly maintained a whale ship, while the Dutch and Hamburghers annual

The commander exacted from all strange ships heavy contributions of oil and fins. At one time, preparation was made for action with five large ships in Belsound, the largest of which was of eight hundred tons burthen, commanded by Michael de Aristiga of St. John de Luz. The MS. is beautifully written, and the natural history of the new countrie' is illustrated by well drawn pictures. The expedition was fitted out at the charge and adventure of the Right Worshipfull Sir Thomas Smyth, knight, and the rest of the companie of Merchants tradeing into Moscouia, called the merchants of Newe Trades and Discoueries,'

ly, down to 1778, were employing a fleet of more than 200 vessels. During a part of the intermediate time, they employed as many as 300 vessels, and 18,000 men. The pride of their government was at length aroused, and stimulated by high bounties and high hopes, the English again became competitors. Their attempts, under the name of the Greenland Company and the South Sea Company, had proved abortive and ruinous. Between 1732 and 1749, the bounty had risen to 40s. per ton, at which it remained permanent for the remainder of the century. This was a new era in British fishery. Up to 1785, the average number of British whalers frequenting Greenland and Davis's Straits was about sixty. During the four following years it received an unprecedented increase, for in 1788, two hundred and fifty-three vessels were employed. The whale fleets of Holland were swallowed in the tremendous vortex of the French Revolution, leaving England to maintain more vessels in the Greenland seas, than all the other nations of Europe besides. It should be observed, that previously to this time, nearly all the maritime States of Europe had been at different periods engaged in the business, to a greater or less extent.

The English at first prosecuted the trade from their metropolis, but, selecting more eligible ports, from time to time, we find the whale squadrons now chiefly sailing from Hull and Whitby in England, and Peterhead, Aberdeen, Dundee and Leith in Scotland. The active and eager pursuit has driven the monsters from their old haunts, across the Atlantic. Vigilantly pursued among the Greenland channels, they have taken refuge in Davis's Straits and Baffin's Bay, and these are now the exclusive fields of the Greenland Fishery. In this fishery, for the eight years previous to 1818, one hundred and thirty ships were employed, but the fleet is now diminished to about ninety.

In following the history of this perilous and desperate mode of hardy industry, our attention is so enchained by dangers, storms and misery endured, as well as by the exhibition of the grandest spectacles with which nature gratifies the vision of man, that our curiosity is hardly aroused to a consideration of it as a source of national wealth. Here let us pause, to con

sider for a moment the perils of cold, of famine, of tempest and shipwreck, that are incident to these exhibitions. We must recollect, that the cruise is generally beyond the 70th parallel of

latitude. Exposed as these hardy mariners are to cold and danger and every imaginable hardship, success seems no flattering incentive. Obliged to sail among islands and mountains of ice, it requires all their watchfulness and dexterity to elude the besetting dangers. The masts and shrouds are often glazed with ice, -their cables of hemp or iron are snapped asunder like pipe stems, and benumbed as they must continually be, they thus navigate the ocean for months. We can imagine the common dangers that beset them; but who can picture their situation, when darkness makes the storm more awful, and their emotions more intense? The ship rises upon a mountain wave, and plunges into a chasm, perhaps to strike upon a mass of ice. After a disruption of those immense icy fields, which cover the arctic regions, it requires all the seamen's skill to thread the passages. Sometimes, detained late in the season, they get imbedded in the shoals of ice, and have been thus compelled to endure the long northern winter. They perhaps drift onward far towards the pole. The days gradually shorten, the sun makes a short segment above the horizon, finally a small portion of his disk appears, and the next day he is gone to leave the world herbless, treeless, lifeless.' Without any of those comforts, those furnaces, and preparations for mental excitement, which made the winterings of Ross and Parry more tolerable, they have patiently waited, month after month, till the breaking up of the following season. Perhaps they go out for game, and one of the crew finds himself in the embrace of a huge bear, and the mangled corpse only of a comrade is rescued after a desperate engagement, rendered more fierce, as the bear is more raging and ravenous from a month of fasting.

Sometimes, vessel after vessel has been dashed to atoms, and the few remnants of many crews that have gone down to the fathomless abysses are obliged to crowd into a single ship, already perhaps short of provisions, or into a few small boats, and push for a northern shore. And what awaits them there? If too late to reach the ship, or the settlement of more civilized man, divided among a savage tribe, they may possibly survive till spring in filthy huts, where the condensed moisture falls in flakes of snow, upon the admission of cold by an aperture. Happily they often experience a hospitality, among those rude people, which they have looked for in vain among a more cultivated race. If not so fortunate as to land where they see the vestiges of VOL. XXXVIII.-NO. 82. 12