THE WHALEBONE WHALES OF THE WESTERN NORTH ATLANTIC. 7 



for the benefit of the cathedrall church. In the hauen is a great swalth * ; and 

 when the tide doth runne out, all the whales doe runne into the sayd swalth." 2 



Boty's account is of course pre-Columbian, and as it is supposed to relate to 

 the most flourishing period of the Norse colonies in Greenland, we may properly 

 consider that the events mentioned in it occurred in the 12th century. What- 

 ever the fact as regards the date of this observation, we may well doubt that the 

 whales referred to were whalebone whales. It is much more probable that they 

 were white whales, Delphinapterus. 



Passing on to the times of Columbus and the great discoverers and explorers, 

 the earliest bit of information about the larger whales of Greenland which I find is 

 in Beste's narrative of Martin Frobisher's third voyage to Davis Strait in 1578. 

 An odd accident happened to one of the vessels in his fleet, which is thus 

 described : 



[1578. FROBISHER'S THIRD VOYAGE.] 



"On Monday, the laste of June [1578], wee mette with manye greate whales, 

 as they hadde beene porposes. 



" This same day the Salamander being under both hir corses and bonets, 

 hapned to strike a greate whale with hir full stemme, wyth such a blow, that the 

 ship stoode stil and stirred neither forward e nor backward. The whale thereat 

 made a great and ugly noise, and caste up his body and tayle, and so went under 

 water, and within two dayes after there was founde a greate whale dead, swimming 

 above water, which we supposed was that the Salamander stroke." 3 



The place where this happened must have been just east of Frobisher Bay, the 

 entrance to which (Queen Elizabeth's Foreland 4 ) they sighted July 2d. 



It is somewhat singular that there is no vessel named Salamander in the roster 

 of the fleet. As there is a Salomon or Sollomon, however, it is probable that the 

 name is misspelt in the paragraph quoted above. 



From the expression "greate whales, as they hadde beene porposes" in the first 

 sentence, it might be inferred that the Salomon ran against an Orcinus or Hyperoo- 

 don, rather than a baleen whale, but it seems hardly probable that either of these 

 could stop a vessel of above 130 tons under full sail. Furthermore, I presume it 



1 An eddy, or whirlpool. 



' A Treatise of Iver Boty a Gronlander, etc. In Asher's Henry Hudson the Navigator 

 (Hakluyt Society, 1860, p. 231). From Purchas His Pilgrimes, v, 3, pp. 518-520. Writings of 

 William Barentz in Hudson's possession. 



The complete heading of the narrative is as follows: " A Treatise of Iver Boty a Gronlander, 

 translated out of the Norsh language into High Dutch, in the yeere 1560. And after out of High 

 Dutch into Low Dutch, by William Barentson of Amsterdam, who was chiefe Pilot aforesaid [of the 

 expedition of 1595 to the Northeast]. The same copie in High Dutch is in the hands of lodocvs 

 Hondivs, which I haue scene. And this was translated out of Low Dutch by Master William 

 Stere, Marchant, in the yeere 1608, for the vse of me Henrie Hudson. William Barentsons Booke 

 is in the hands of Master Peter Plantivs, who lent the same vnto me." 



'The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher. Ed. by R. Collinson. Hakluyt Soc., 1867, p. 

 234. Reprinted from the ist ed. of Hakluyt's Voyages. 



* Or Cape Resolution, Resolution Island. 



