186 MARINE MAMMALS OF THE NORTH-WESTERN COAST. 
Deduction of the Origin of Commerce), or, as Hakluyt thinks, about 890, 'Our 
excellent King Alfred' received from one Octher [Ohthere?], a Norwegian, an 
account of his discoveries northward on the coast of Norway ; a coast which seems 
to have been before very little, if at all, known to the Anglo-Saxons. There is 
one very remarkable thing in this account; for he tells King Alfred 'that he sailed 
along the Norwa}' coast, so far north as commonly the whale -hunters used to 
travel;' which shows the great antiquity of whale - fishing ; though undoubtedly 
then, and long after, the use of what is usually called whalebone was not known ; 
so that they fished for whales merely on account of their fat or oil. Octher, after 
giving a very curious description of the country inhabited by the Finmans, proceeds 
to say, 'he visited this country also with a view of catching horse -whales, which 
had bones of very great value for their teeth, of which he brought some to the 
king ; that their skins were good for making ropes for ships. These whales are 
much less than other whales, being only five ells long. The best whales were 
caught in his own country, of which some were forty -eight, some fifty yards long. 
He said that he was one of six who had killed sixty in two days.'"* 
"These horse -whales, spoken of by Octher, were what we call sea-horses, 
and the Dutch, sea - cows, or morses. It is probable that the length of the 
whales caught in his own country is greatly exaggerated. Beale quotes from many 
of the ancient writers instances of extraordinary exaggerations of this kind, and 
doubts whether any whales were ever seen of a greater length than eighty or ninety 
feet, even admitting they were once found of larger growth than any now seen or 
captured. The earliest authentic data that I have been able to find respecting the 
origin of the whale-fishery, as a regular and permanent branch of trade, is that 
furnished by M'Culloch in his Commercial Dictionary ; which, although little more 
than a condensation from the works of Anderson, Macpherson, and others, is of a 
more reliable character than any similar compilation I have met with. At the time 
* This would seem incredible ; but when we Daines Barrington, in the account of Ohthere's 
investigate the statement, it is found that Ohthere voyage, published in his Miscellanies, translates 
was a Flemish writer. Hence, instead of reckon- the passage, containing his exploit in the whale- 
ing ells at three feet, we put them down at twen" fishery, in the words, 'he had killed some sis; 
ty-seven inches, which would make the largest and sixty in two days.' But, conscious of the 
whale one hundred and twelve feet long. As unintelligibleness of the sentence, he observes, 
to the killing of sixty whales in two days, by in a note, that syxa, he conceives, should be a 
six men, as stated by Ohthere, Scoresby (Arctic second time repeated here, instead of syxlig, or 
Regions, Vol. II, page 9) gives a very plain ac- sixty; it would then only be asserted that six 
count, in a note, of how this assertion might be had been taken in two days, which is much more 
truthful; which is as follows: "The Honorable probable than sixty." 
