in.] WHALES. 129 



are found at the now deserted settlements there. The white 

 whale there goes several hundred kilometres up the river. I 

 have also seen large shoals of this small species of whale on the 

 north coast of Spitzbergen and the Taimur peninsula. 



Other species of the whale <xcur seldom on Novaya Zemlya. 

 Thus on this occasion only two small whales were seen durincf 

 our passage from Tromsoe, and I do not remember having seen 

 more than one in the sea round Novaya Zemlya in the course of 

 my two previous voyages to the Yenisej. At the north part of 

 the island, too, these animals occur so seldom, that a hunter told 

 me, as something remarkable, that towards the end of July, 1873, 

 W.X.W. of the western entrance to Matotschkin Schar 20' to 30' 

 from land, be had seen a larcje number of whales, belonoins to 

 two species, of ^hich one was a slcuthval, and the other had as 

 it were a top, instead of a fin, on the back. 



It is very remarkable that whales still occur in great abun- 

 dance on the Norwegian coast, though they have been hunted 

 there for a thousand years back, but, on the other hand, if we 

 except the little white whale, only occasionally east of the 

 White Sea. The whale fishing which was carried on on so 

 grand a scale on the west coast of Spitzbergen, has therefore 

 never been prosecuted to any great extent on ]*s ovaya Zemlya : 

 and fragments of skeletons of the whale which are found thrown 

 up in such quantities on the shores of Spitzbergen, are not to be 

 found, so far as my experience reaches, either on the shores of 

 Novaya Zemlya, on the coast of the Kara Sea, or at the places 

 on the north coast of Siberia between the Yenisej and the Lena, 

 at which we landed. The sacrifices which were so long made 

 in vain in the endeavour to find a passage to China in this 

 direction accordingly were not compensated, as on Spitzbergen, 

 by the rise of a profitable whale fishery. Meeting with a whale 

 is spoken of by the first seafarers in these regions as something 

 very remarkable and dangerous ; for instance, in the account of 

 Stephen Burrough's voyage in 1556 : — "' (^n St. .James his 

 day, there was a monstrous whale aboord of us, so neere to our 

 side that we might have thrust a sworde or any other weapon in 

 him, which we durst not doe for feare he should have over- 

 throwen our shippe ; and then I called my company together, 

 and all of us shouted, and with the crie that we made he de- 

 parted from us ; there was as much above water of his back as 

 the bredth of our pinnesse, and at his falling down he made 

 such a terrible noise in the water, that a man would greatly have 

 marvelled, except he had known the cause of it ; but, God be 

 thanked, we were quietly delivered of him." ^ When Xearchus 

 sailed with the fleet of Alexander the Great from the Indus to 

 the Red Sea, a whale also caused so great a panic that it was 



1 Haklavt, first edition, p. 317. 



K 



