'LONG SHORE 71 



where whaling was an old story to a land where shore whaling 

 had been practised long before the written history of the natives 

 began. The abundance of whales in Massachusetts Bay in- 

 fluenced them in choosing the site of their new town. Finding 

 dead whales on their beaches, they seized eagerly upon them 

 and used every ounce of blubber and bone. When drift 

 whales no longer sufficed them, they put to sea in small boats 

 from Long Island and Cape Cod, and later from Nantucket, 

 and began shore whaling as the Basques had done centuries 

 before, and as the Indians and Esquimaux were still doing. 

 And as was natural enough, they hired their wiry and adventur- 

 ous neighbours, the red men, to help man their boats. 



An old Indian was in the fleet of thirty boats that was once 

 caught six miles off shore in a blizzard. The boatmen, Indians 

 and white men alike, rowed for their lives until they were ex- 

 hausted and ready to give up the struggle, when the old fellow 

 yelled at them, ''Momadichchator augua sarshkee samkee pin- 

 cheeeynoo sememoochkee chaquanks wihchee pinchee eynoo," 

 which Zacheus Macy translates as, "Pull ahead with courage; 

 do not be disheartened; we shall not be lost now; there are too 

 many Enghshmen to be lost now." By his vehemence, or by 

 some encouraging semblance of truth in his curious logic, the 

 old man stirred them to such efforts that they gained way 

 against the storm and, further encouraged by this, succeeded in 

 reaching shore. 



There are few, if any, records of the earliest whale hunting, 

 unless we consider as such Bodford's account of the whale that 

 rose on a warm day and lay dozing half a musketshot from the 

 Mayflower. At the whale^ ''two were prepared to shoot, to see 

 whether she would stir or no. He that gave fire first, his musket 

 flew in pieces, both stock and barrel; yet, thanks be to God 

 neither he nor any man else was hurt with it, though many were 

 there about. But when the whale saw her time, she gave a snuff 

 and away." Yet the orders of the General Court with regard to 

 fishing privileges and with regard to whales that, after being 

 harpooned, died at sea and floated ashore make it plain that 



^Glover M. Allen. The Whalebone Whales of New England, p. 146. 



