ii2 THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 







agreed to in proportion as three for Friesland to twenty- 

 four for Holland and Zealand combined ; and Friesland 

 was secured the range of the other companies' whaling 

 area, provided they should not place their establishments 

 nearer to each other than was reasonable. A general 

 assembly of shareholders was to be held thrice a year, in 

 which Holland was to have six votes, Zealand two, and 

 Friesland one, and all parties agreed to trade only to and 

 from the United Provinces, and keep secret, and exploit 

 for the common advantage any new discoveries or inven- 

 tions to be made by any of them. The Prisons soon 

 afterwards established a blubber-boilery of their own at 

 Smeerenburg, from the ruins of which part of the shore 

 was called the " Harlinger* Traankokery " till late in the 

 eighteenth century. 



Notwithstanding this extension both of their capital and 

 working power, matters went backward with the Arctic (or 

 Greenland) Companies after the renewal of their monopoly 

 in 1633. Several very unfavourable seasons, in which the 

 state of the ice occasioned the loss of many vessels, con- 







tributed to their decline ; but Zorgdrager, who certainly 

 was a competent judge of the matter, mainly attributed it 

 to their improvident way of fishing. When the great 

 whaling establishments near Spitzbergen were first con- 

 structed, the company seems to have counted on a per- 

 petual affluence of whales to the same spots. But as this 

 animal procreates slowly, and has, moreover, a propensity 

 to migrate when much chased and annoyed, sport became 

 rare after a few years of abundance and reckless destruction 

 of them. The train-oil and whalebone mine had been 



Harlingen is a town in the province of Friesland, and one of its 

 burgomasters, named Hilbrancl Dirksz, was one of the first partici- 

 pators in the Prison whaling concern. 



