A. D. 890.] CROXOLOGICAL HISTORY. 7 



clown to US in his translation of Orosius*. On 

 this occasion, Ohthere sailed to the northward along 

 the coast of Norway, round the North Cape, to the 

 entrance of the White Sea. Three days after leav- 

 ing Dronthein or Halgoland, " he was come as far 

 " towards the north, as commonly the whale-hunt- 

 " ers used to travel f ." Here Ohthere evidently al- 

 ludes to the hunters of the walrus or seahorse ; but 

 subsequently, he speaks pointedly as to a fishery for 

 some species of cetaceous animals, having been at 

 that period practised by the Norwegians. He told 

 the King, that with regard to the common kind of 

 whales, the place of most and best hunting for them 



* The work of Orosius is a summarj' of ancient history, 

 ending with the year 417, at which period he Hved. He was 

 a Spaniard and a Christian. To this translation, Alfred add- 

 ed, of his own composition, a Sketch of Germany, and the va- 

 luable Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan, the former towards 

 the North Pole, the latter into the Baltic Sea. The principal 

 MS. of Alfred's Orosius, which is very ancient and well writ- 

 ten, is preserved in the Cotton Library, Tiberius, b. 1. In 

 1773, the Honourable Daines Harrington published the An- 

 glo-Saxon Orosius, with an English translation. His MS. 

 was a transcript fonnerly made of this. — Turner's Anglo- 

 Saxons, vol. ii. p. 282, 283, and 284. 



t Hackluyt's Voyages, vol. i. p. 4. Turner's History of the 

 Anglo-Saxons, vol. ii. p. 288.-296, reads, " Three days was 

 " he as far north as the whale hunters farthest go." — '' Da 

 " ves he sva feor nord sva sva liooel huntan fyrrest farad." . 



