12 THE WHALEBONE AVHALES OF THE WESTERN NORTH ATLANTIC. 



Skin, and white underneath the Chaps: This Whale yields about 100 Hogsheads 



of dyl. , , J ■ ,, 



*' The second is called Sarda, of the same colour, but somewhat less, and yields 

 about 70 or 80 Hogsheads; he hath white things growing on his Back like to 

 Barnacles." * 



Edo-e thus coiToborates Baffin, and there can be no doubt that the name " Grand 

 Bay whale " was in currency for BalcBna mysticetus at the beginning of the seven- 

 teenth century and perhai)S earlier. 



Grand Bay, as the maps of that period show, was a name applied to that part of 

 the Gulf of St. Lawrence immediately within the Strait of Belle Isle. It is to be 

 found on Allefonsce's sketch, Champlain's maps (1612, 1613, and 1632), Jacobsz's 

 map (1621), and othei's.*^ 



Now, although the latest writer on the Greenland whale places the southern 

 limit of its range at about 58° n. lat., on the coast of Labrador,'' one would not be 

 surprised to learn that in the winter months it followed the ice down to the Strait 

 of Belle Isle, and became the object of a fisheiy there. But, as Eschiicht remarked, 

 the Newfoundland whale fishery of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was 

 cari'ied on exclusively in the summer months and on the theory that the Greenland 

 whale was one of the species pursued, it is necessary to suppose that it remained 

 after the ice had disappeared in these parts, which is entirely contrary to what is 

 known of its habits. 



As a solution of the problem, Eschi'icht suggested that the Basques did not 

 know of the visits of the Greenland whale to the Newfoundland coast until they 

 had begun to establish settlements and wintei' there. In the insti'uctions given 

 Edge by the Muscovy Company the s[)ecies is called the "Bearded whale"; while 

 in his account of his voyages to Spitzbergen, 1612 to 1622, it is called " Grand Bay " 

 whale. The natural inference is that soon after 1611 certain Basques had dis. 

 covered that the Greenland whale occurred in Newfoundland waters, and had 

 afterwards shipped with Edge for the Spitzbergen fishery and reported to him the 

 name " Grand Bay " whale. The matter quoted is chiefly interesting in the present 

 connection as the first attempt to identif}' the whales in American waters with 

 those of Europe, and as an early (though not the earliest) mention of whales at 

 Newfoundland. 



A little later in this same voyage which we have been discussing, Baffin 



' Harris's Voyages, i, p. 574. Purchas, His Pilgrimes, 3, 1625, pp. 462-473. 



Champlain has the following regarding the name of " Grand Baye " ; 



" II y a un lieu dans le golphe Sainct Laurent, qu'on nomme la grande baye, ])roche du passage 

 du Nort de I'lsle de terre neufue, a cinquante deux degres, ou les Basques vont faire la pesche 

 des balaines." 



(Laverdiere, Qiuvres de Champlain, 2d ed., 1870, 6, p. 1088. This is in the second part 

 of Les Voyages de la Nouvelle France Occidentale, dicte Canada. Paris, 1632.) 



'See Justin Winsor's Cartier to Frontenac, 1894, pp. 42, 102, 107, 125, and 140, where 

 these maps are reproduced. 



'Southwell, Thos., The Migration of the Right Whale {^Balana mysticetus). Nat. Sci., 12, 

 1898, pL 12, 



