200 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA, AND ITS METEOROLOGY. 



to have their harpoons marked with date and the name of the 

 ship ; and Dr. Scoresby, in his work on arctic voyages, mentions 

 several instances of whales that have been taken near the Behr- 

 ing's Strait side mth harpoons in them bearing the stamp of ships 

 that were known to cruise on the Baffin's Bay side of the Ame- 

 rican continent ; and as, in one or two instances, a very short time 

 had elapsed between the date of capture in the Pacific and the 

 date when the fish must have been struck on the Atlantic side, it 

 was argued therefore that there was a north-west passage by which 

 the whales passed from one side to the other, since the stricken 

 animal could not have had the harpoon in him long enough to 

 admit of a passage — even if that were possible — around either Cape 

 Horn or the Cape of G-ood Hope. 



423. The whale-fishing is, among the industrial pursuits of the 

 iTarpoons-babits of sca, ouo of HO Httlc importance ; and when the sys- 

 :he whales. -j^gjj^ ^f investigation out of which the " Wind and 



Current Charts " have gro\NTi was commenced, the haunts of this 

 animal did not escape attentive examination. The log-books of 

 whalers were^coUected in great numbers, and patiently examined, 

 co-ordinated, and discussed, in order to find out what parts of the 

 ocean are frequented by this kind of whale, what parts by that, and 

 what parts by neither. (See Plate IX.) Log-books containing 

 the records by difierent ships for hundreds of thousands of days 

 were examined, and the observations in them co-ordinated for this 

 chart. And this investigation, as Plate IX. shows, led to the 

 discovery that the tropical regions of the ocean are to the right 

 whale as a sea of fire, through which he cannot pass, and into 

 which he never enters. The fact was also brought out that the 

 same kind of whale that is foimd ofl' the shores of Greenland, in 

 Baffin's bay, etc., is foimd also in the North Pacific, and about 

 Behring's Strait, and that the right whale of the northern hemi- 

 sphere is a different animal from that of the southern. Thus the 

 fact was established that the harpooned whales did not pass aroimd 

 Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope, for they were of the class 

 that could not cross the equator. In this way we were furnished 

 with circumstantial evidence affording the most irrefi'agable proof 

 that there is, at times at least, open water communication through 

 the Arctic Sea from one side of the continent to the other, for it is 

 known that the whales cannot travel under the ice for such a great 

 distance as is that from one side of this continent to the other. 

 But this did not prove the existence of an open sea there ; it only 



