16 WHALING 



Spain and France meet in the region of the western Pyrenees, 

 hunted, on the banks of Newfoundland, whales that they called 

 "sarda" (whales of the kind that are found in schools), and went 

 on to the Gulf of St. Lawrence where they hunted the " Grand 

 Bay Whales.'' 



Of the earliest days of European whaling we know little; 

 they are lost in the unwritten history of the coast peoples. 

 Whether Basque or Northman was the first to kill whales at sea 

 and tow them to land and try out the oil is a debated question. 

 There are reports of whaling both in the north and off the coast 

 of Flanders in the 9th Century, and we know that there was 

 whaling in the English Channel before the Norman invasion. 

 But with lamentable want of foresight, the earliest whaling 

 captains neglected to enlist the services of scholars and his- 

 torians; and although, on the whole, tradition has it that the 

 Basques were the first to carry on organized whaling, some say 

 the Northmen; and a waggish gentleman has advanced the 

 prior claims of a king in ancient Babylon, whose sporting pro- 

 clivities led him to sea when the resources^of his kingdom palled 

 upon him. 



In the Basque country, on the shore of the Bay of Biscay in 

 northern Spain and southern France, ruins of the old look- 

 out towers and try-works have existed until recent years; 

 and ancient Basque records and documents contain evidences 

 of the industry at a very early time. The seal of Biarritz 

 shows a ''chaloupe" harpooning a whale — the word ''har- 

 poon," be it observed, is a Basque word — and the Basques 

 certainly were whaling before the mariner's compass was in- 

 vented. In the 12th Century (1197) King John of England, 

 acting as Duke of Guyenne, laid the first tax on whaling when 

 he assigned to Vital de Biole a certain sum to be levied on the 

 first two whales of the year captured at Biarritz. In 1261, all 

 whales landed at Bayonne were tithed, which tithing un- 

 doubtedly had its origin in the earlier custom of giving the 

 whales' tongues to the Church. 



The Basques, like the Indian whalers of America, and later 

 the first whalemen of Nantucket, watched from headlands or 



