242 HISTORY AND DETAILS OF WHALING. 



adventure, daring, and danger." In a word, it is fishery upon 

 a gigantic scale, in which romance and reality are strangely 

 blended. 



" The whale fishery is a practice of long standing in the 

 world. It is supposed that the Norwegians began to prosecute 

 this hazardous and arduous enterprise as early as the closing 

 part of the ninth century. From rather vague statements, on 

 this subject, which have come down to us, it would seem that 

 they confined themselves to the capturing of a few whales in 

 their bays and harbors. 



" The shores of the Bay of Biscay, where the Normans formed 

 early settlements, became famous through them for the whale 

 fishery there earned on. In the same region, it was first made 

 a regular commercial pursuit ; and as the whales visited the 

 bay in large numbers, the traffic was convenient and easy. 



"The Biscayans maintained it with great vigor and success 

 in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. 



« ' We find from a work of Noel, « Upon the Antiquity of 

 Whale Fishing,' that, in 1261, a tithe was laid upon the tongues 

 of whales imported into Bayonne, they being then a highly 

 esteemed species of food. In 1338, Edward III. relinquished 

 to Peter de Puyanne a duty of six pounds sterling laid on 

 each whale brought into the port of Biarritz, to indemnify him 

 for the extraordinary expenses he had incurred in fitting out 

 a fleet for the service of his majesty. 



"The Biscayans, however, soon gave up the whale fishery 

 for the want of fish, which ceased to come southward, no 

 longer leaving the icy seas. 



11 In process of time, voyages both of the Dutch and English 

 were undertaken to discover a passage through the Northern 

 Ocean to India ; and though they entirely failed in their pri- 

 mary object, yet they laid open the remote haunts of the 

 whale, and immediately began to prosecute the enterprise of 

 their capture. Even then, it was said, they employed the Bis- 

 cayans as their harpooners, and for a considerable part of their 



