18& WHALE-FISHERY. 



ally overcome. It then sinks, and is easily hauled 

 out by the line into the open sea. 



To particularize all the variety of pack-fishing, 

 arising from winds and weather, size of the fish, state 

 and peculiarities of the ice, &c. would require more 

 space than the interest of the subject, to general 

 readers, would justify. I shall, therefore, only re- 

 mark, that pack-fishing is, on the whole, the most 

 troublesome and dangerous of all others; — that in- 

 stances have occurred of fish having been entangled 

 during 40 or 50 hours, and have escaped after 

 all; — and that other instances are remembered, of 

 ships having lost the greater part of their stock of 

 lines, several of their boats, and sometimes, though 

 happily, less commonly, some individuals of their 

 crews. 



2. Field-fishing. — The fishery for whales, when 

 conducted at the margin of those wonderful sheets 

 of solid ice, called fields, is, when the weather is 

 fine, and the refuge for ships secure, of all other 

 situations which the fishery of Greenland presents, 

 the most agreeable and sometimes the most produc- 

 tive. A fish struck at the margin of a large field of 

 ice, generally descends obliquely beneath it, takes 

 four to eight lines from the fast-boat, and then re- 

 turns exhausted to the edge. It is then attacked in 

 the usual way, with harpoons and lances, and is 

 easily killed. There is one evident advantage in 

 field-fishing, which is this: When the fast-boat lies 

 at the edge of a firm unbroken field, and the 



