04! WHALE-IlSHEllY. 



ment "*,) would not allow them to fish, but obligetl 

 them to return home, threatening to make prizes of 

 their ships and cargoes if ever they had the pre- 

 sumption to appear again on the fishery f . They 

 conceived themselves to be justifiable in this con- 

 duct, from the supposition that the discoverers of 

 Spitzbergen, as they considered themselves, and its 

 whale-fisheries, were entitled to all the emoluments 

 to be derived from them. The Dutch vessels ;}] 

 which, on this occasion, were repulsed from the 

 fishery, were piloted by a man who had been twen- 

 ty years in the service of the Russia Company ; 

 and the Spanish vessel which the same year at- 

 temi^ted the Spitzbergen fishery, was piloted by an- 



* " In most of the new bi'anches of trade discovered by the 

 " English, in the latter part of the sixteenth^ and the former 

 " part of the seventeenth century, we may observe, that the 

 " Dutch followed close at their heels. This has been seen in 

 " the Russia Trade, — the N. E. and N. W. attempts for a pas- 

 " sage to China, — in planting America, — in the circumnaviga- 

 " tion of tlie globe, — and in the East India Commerce." — 

 Macpherson's Annals of Contunerce, vol. ii. p. 26 1. 



t Ellcing's View of the Greenland Trade and Whale-fishery, 

 p. 41. 



+ Mos^ authorities mention only one Dutch vessel as having 

 sailed to Spitzbergen this year ; but, as De Bry, who mentions 

 two vessels, wrote his account in the following year, I have 

 preferred his authority to any other. 



