394 THRILLING ADVENTURES. 



them in this way is great, unless some of the more vital parts 

 are wounded. But the great developement of the brain 

 renders them much more vulnerable in the head than in any- 

 other part ; and the quickest way of dispatching them is by 

 beating them on the head with heavy clubs. This is exten- 

 sively done by the seal-fishers at Jan Mayen, where the ani- 

 mals are found in such numbers, that the men can knock 

 them on the head till they are absolutely wearied with the 

 slaughter ; and in the best time of the season they very soon 

 fill a boat, or even a ship with a valuable cargo. The seal- 

 fishing commences earlier in the season than the whale-fishing ; 

 and when the fishing vessels that resort to Old Greenland, 

 that is, to the vicinity of Spitzbergen, arrive too early, they 

 bear away to Jan Mayen for the seal-fishing. Sometimes the 

 " seal club" is exercised to no small advantage on the caverned 

 shores in the north of Britain. These caves penetrate to such 

 distances in the rock, that they are quite dark for a conside- 

 rable way. The seals resort there to take their siesta ; and 

 the people watch their time, enter the cave with torches and 

 clubs, and the seals, alarmed and nearly blinded by the glare 

 of the torches, become an easy prey. There is of course a 

 great deal of scrambling on these occasions ; men and seals 

 rolling over each other on the slippery stones ; and sometimes 

 a seal will wrest a club from the owner, and bear it off in 

 triumph to the water. 



In winter the Greenlanders hunt the seals on the ice, creep- 

 ing cautiously up to them, and dispatching them with spears 

 and clubs. Icelanders and Laplanders hunt the morse in 

 their light, watertight boats, spearing them in the water. 



In early times, when navigation consisted of little more 

 than coasting and crossing the narrow seas, the seals as well 

 as the Cetacea, were far more numerous than they are present : 

 and their numbers came into lower latitudes. But the fishery 

 which was carried on at first by the Dutch, and lately by the 

 British and the Anglo-Americans, has greatly thinned their 



