THE WHALE FISHERY. 



of which some were forty- eight, some fifty 

 yards long."* But the Biscayans are believed 

 to have been the first people who prosecuted 

 the whale fishery as a commercial pursuit, so 

 far back as the twelfth century. In the north 

 of Europe, and all around the Bay of Biscay, 

 whale's tongues were among the table delica- 

 cies of the middle ages. 



When this branch of industry failed with 

 them, by reason of whales ceasing to visit the 

 Bay of Biscay, the English and Dutch, taught 

 by the Biscayans, " who were best experienced 

 in that facultie of whale -striking/' took it up in 

 the Northern Seas, where the gigantic game 

 was then everywhere found in vast numbers by 

 navigators in search of a northern passage to 

 the Indies. By the middle of the seventeenth 



* The record of this exploit, though literally derived from 

 ancient documents, is of much uncertainty because of its im- 

 probability. The fact, however, is shown in Scoresby's Arctic 

 Regions (vol. ii., p. 10) as not unlikely to have occurred in 

 respect to a species of Delphinus, so frequently driven on 

 shore and captured by the inhabitants of Orkney, Shetland, 

 and Iceland in the present day. In the work referred to, the 

 early history of the whale-fishery is given at considerable 

 extent. ED. 



