144 Dr Latta's Observatio7is on the Greenland Sea, 



whale-fishery. It thus rests with those who engage in tFiis bu- 

 siness, to judge whether the advantages of an early voyage more 

 than counterbalance the numerous disadvantages attending it. 

 Very few captures of late years have been made on the south- 

 west fishing-ground ; so few, indeed, that some of our experi- 

 enced fishermen consider it a waste of time to visit it. Indeed, 

 on mature deliberation, we doubt not but every one who knows 

 any thing of the business will condemn the present disastrous 

 system. Every year our fleets make hair-breadth escapes, — 

 every year one or two vessels are lost, but such evil being small 

 in proportion to the risk, is actually little thought of. It is on- 

 ly when the calamity becomes general, as has been the case this 

 season, — when ten, a dozen, or a score of vessels are crushed 

 to pieces, — when fifty or a hundred thousand pounds' worth of 

 property is sent to the bottom of the sea, — when we have eight 

 hundred or a thousand families thrown destitute for the winter, 

 some bereft of a father, a brother, or a son, — and when oil rises 

 to fifty or sixty pounds a ton : It is only after such complicated 

 misfortune that we hear of it, and that too with a vengeance. 



Having thus given a brief sketch of the prominent peculia- 

 rities of this perilous voyage, and adduced ample reasons why 

 the present plan of conducting it should be abandoned, we 

 shall cbnclude our remarks for the present, by recommending to 

 the enterprising, a method by which the valuable produce of 

 Baffin's Bay may probably be obtained with comparatively little 

 risk. 



It is the opinion of experienced fishermen, who have spent 

 half their lives in Greenland, that the sea in the higher lati- 

 tudes of Baffin's Bay, if it freezes at all, is covered with ice late, 

 and is very early broken up. Adjoining Lancaster Sound, across 

 to the Arctic Highlands, and down along the western shores of 

 the bay, towards the 68° of latitude, they find it always free 

 from ice. In the above opinion, they are supported by the ex- 

 istence of tribes of Esquimaux inhabiting the head of the bay, 

 who are dependent on an open sea for subsistence, who told 

 Sacheuse, that they were the only people in the world, and that 

 the water adjoining their territory, was the only place free from 

 ice, rendered it necessary in their opinion, that Sacheuse and 



