292 WHALE FISHERIES. 



extensive a range. Time may be said to belong to it as well 

 as space; its life is centuries; a thousand years the term of 

 its existence.* In swiftness of motion it surpasses even the 

 trade winds; the latter only move at the rate of rather more 

 than thirty-five feet a second; the whale, considerably faster. 

 Supposing a whale were to take twelve hours rest a day, it 

 would go round the globe at the equator in forty-seven days, 

 and would be only twenty-four days going from pole to pole. 

 And then its size in which it bears the same proportion to 

 the marine animals, as the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the 

 hippopotamus, do to terrestrial. No animal is more power- 

 ful, none has such universal empire, f 



Would you have the kindness, mamma, to give us some 

 account of the whale fishery] 



MRS. F. 



With pleasure; I will give you an abstract of some notes 

 which I have made upon the subject. 



HENRIETTA. 



Thank you, aunt. 



MRS. F. 



Though the Norwegians may have occasionally captured 

 the whale before any other European nation engaged in so 

 perilous an enterprise, the Biscayans are certainly the first 

 people who prosecuted the whale fishery as a regular com- 

 mercial pursuit.}: They carried it on with great'vigor and 

 success during the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centu- 

 ries; and whales' tongues at that time were esteemed as an 

 article of food, and the whalebone also brought a very large 

 price. 



* Lacepede. 



t Lacepede, Buffon, and Diet, des Sciences Naturelles. 



$ The following is taken from M. Jonkaire's work on the Whale 

 Fishery, as quoted in the 14th number of the Foreign Quarterly 

 lleview. 



