Early Mom in the North 151 



climates that there may have been a very great extension of the 

 Arctic Ice-cap from about 1450 a.d. onwards, so that the old Norse 

 route might have been sealed and made impassable, requiring a voy- 

 age of investigation. Then, in 1557, another Englishman, also on a 

 voyage to Muscovy (Russia) reported, "About the Island of Zenam 

 we saw many whales, very monstrous, about our ships, some by esti- 

 mation of 60 feet long, and being the engendering time they roared 

 and cried terrible." 



It is believed that the Island of Zenam refers to Spitsbergen, al- 

 though this was from the first and up until 1 800 called "East Green- 

 land" by the British. It may, however, have been Bear Island (see 

 map). In any case, this account stirred up considerable interest 

 among the directors of the newly founded great joint-stock com- 

 pany which had been chartered on the sixth of February, 1555, under 

 the title "Merchants Adventurers of England for the Discovery of 

 Lands, Territories, Isles, Dominions, and Seigniories, unknown and 

 not before that late Adventure or Enterprise by sea or navigation 

 commonly frequented," otherwise known as the "Muscovy Com- 

 pany." The directors decided to enter the whaling industry, but in 

 the way events have always taken place in England, it was 1576 be- 

 fore the Crown granted the company, which had by then been rein- 

 corporated as the "Fellowship of English Merchants for Discovery 

 of New Trades," the monopoly to kill whales and make train oil 

 (whale oil) for twenty years. 



Although the Crown took so long to get into action, some British 

 whaling was, in the meantime, being prosecuted off the coast of 

 Norway and off Newfoundland. These were private enterprises 

 carrying on a tradition which, on closer research, turns out to have 

 been quite ancient. We have less concrete or recorded evidence on 

 the early British whaling history than on that of any other of the 

 dozen nations or peoples we shall meet by the end of our journey, 

 but it is still there, as is shown by a remarkable little interchange in 

 the Chronica Majora of Matthew Paris, published in 1240, consisting 

 of Anglo-Saxon chronicles of the period prior to the Norman con- 

 quest in 1066, and written in Latin. In this is some dialogue com- 

 posed by one Aelfric, Abbot of Ensham, in the form of questions 

 and answers to teach his Saxon pupils Latin. It goes as follows, in 

 somewhat literal translation: 



