4 NEW ENGLAND WHALE FISHERY. 



Zorgdrager no less than one hundred and eighty- 

 eight vessels, afford, perhaps, the most remark- 

 able instance on record of what commerce can 

 do against unyielding laws of Nature, and over 

 obstructions which it would seem impossible to 

 surmount. But how soon does Nature, if ever 

 temporarily displaced, resume her sway. Now 

 that the whales have long since deserted those 

 parts, even the site of the old Arctic colony is 

 hardly discernible, and even the English branch 

 of the Greenland whale fishery, of late years 

 the principal and most prosperous, has become 

 quite insignificant, indeed all but extinct. 



The first person that is recorded to have 

 killed a whale among the people of New Eng- 

 land was one William Hamilton, somewhere 

 between 1660 and 1670. In the town records 

 of Nan tucket there is a copy of an agreement 

 entered into in the year 1672, between one 

 James Lopar and the settlers there, " to carry 

 on a design of whale fishing." But whether 

 the first proper whaling harpoon used in Ame- 

 rica was wrought there or on Cape Cod cannot 

 be ascertained. From this time onward, when- 



