FIELD-FISHING. Q59 



pendulous in the water. If it still floats, bags of 

 sand, kedges, or small cannon, are suspended by a 

 block on the bight of the line, wherewith the 

 buoyancy of the dead whale is usually overcome. 

 It then sinks, and is easily hauled out by the line 

 into the open sea. 



To particularise all the variety in pack-fishing, 

 arising from winds and weather, size of the fish, 

 state and peculiarities of the ice, &c. would require 

 more space than the interest of the subject, to ge- 

 neral readers, would justify. I shall, therefore, 

 only remark, that pack-fishing is, on the whole, the 

 most troublesome and dangerous of all others ; — 

 that instances have occurred of fish having been en- 

 tangled during 40 or 50 hours, and have escaped af- 

 ter all ; — and that other instances are remembered, 

 of ships having lost the greater part of their stock 

 of lines, several of their boats, and sometimes, 

 though happily less commonly, some individuals of 

 their crews. 



2. Fleld-fishhig. — The fishery for whales, when 

 conducted at the margin of these wonderful sheets 

 of solid ice, called fields, is, when the weather is fine, 

 and the refiige for ships secure, of all other situations 

 which the fishery of Greenland presents, the most 

 agreeable, and sometimes the most productive. A 

 fish struck at the margin of a large field of ice, 

 generally descends obliquely beneath it, takes four 

 to ciijht lines from the fast-boat, and then returns 



