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THE WHALEBONE WHALES OF THE WESTERN NORTH ATLANTIC. 
In Bradford’s and Winslow’s Journal of events in Plymouth Colony from 
1602 to 1625 we find the following under date of November 11, 1620: 
[1620. CAPE COD, BRADFORD’s AND WINSLOW’S “JOURNAL,” ] 
[ Nov. 11, 1620.] “And every day we saw whales playing hard by us; of 
which in that place, if we had instruments and means to take them, we might have 
made a very rich return; which, to our great grief, we wanted. Our master and 
his mate, and others experienced in fishing, professed we might have made three or 
four thousand pounds’ worth of oil. They preferred it before Greenland whale- 
fishing, and purpose the next winter to fish for whale here.” ! 
In the same Journal, among the arguments brought forward for the establish- 
ment of a settlement at Pamet River, on Cape Cod, is the following: 
[1620. CAPE COD, MASS. BRADFORD'S AND WINSLOW’S “JOURNAL.” ] 
“Thirdly, Cape Cod was like to be a place of good fishing; for we saw daily 
great whales, of the best kind for oil and bone, come close aboard our ship, and, in 
fair weather, swim and play about us. There was once one, when the sun shone 
warm, came and lay above water, as 1f she had been dead, for a good while to- 
gether, within half a musket shot of the ship; at which two were prepared to 
shoot, to see whether she would stir or no. He that gave fire first, his musket flew 
in pieces, both stock and barrel; yet, thanks be to God, neither he nor any man 
else was hurt with it, though many were there about. But when the whale saw 
her time, she gave a snuff, and away.” 
An account of a voyage to New England in 1629 contains the following 
reference to whales: 
“This day [June 24] we had all a cleare and comfortable sight of America, 
and of the Cape Sable that was over against us 7 or 8 leagues northward. Here 
we saw yellow gilliflowers on the sea. 
“Thursday [25 June| wind still N. E. a full and fresh gale. In the afternoon 
we had a cleare sight of many islands and hills by the sea shoare. Now we saw 
abundance of mackrill, a great store of great whales puffing up water as they goe, 
*Younc, ALEx., Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers of the Colony of Plymouth from 1602 to 
1625, Boston, 1841, p. 119. Bradford’s and Winslow’s Journal. Young comments on this para- 
graph as follows: 
“Whales are frequently seen in Barnstable Bay and on the outside of the Cape, and are killed 
by boats from Provincetown. Occasionally, though more rarely of late, they come into the harbour ; 
at the beginning of the present century, two or three whales, producing about a hundred barrels of 
oil, were annually caught ; the last that was killed in the harbour was in Dec., 1840, a humpback, 
that made fifty barrels of oil. The appearance of a whale in the harbour is the signal for a general 
stir among the hundred graceful five-hand boats that line the circling shore of this beautiful bay. 
The American whale fishery commenced at Cape Cod, where it was carried on entirely in boats, 
which put off whenever a signal was given by persons on the look out from an elevated station, 
that a whale was seen to blow. In 1690 ‘one Ichabod Paddock’ went from the Cape to Nantucket 
to teach the inhabitants of that isle the art and mystery of catching whales.—See AZass. Hist. Coll. 
(Gi), nom, Hei. 
2 Op. cit., p. 146. 
