22 THE WHALEBONE WHALES OF THE WESTERN NORTH ATLANTIC. 



In Bradford's and Winslow's Journal of events in Plymouth Colony from 

 1602 to 1625 we find the following under date of November 11, 1620 : 



[1620. CAPE COD. BRADFORD'S AND WINSLOW'S "JOURNAL."] 



[Nov. 11, 1620.] "And every day we saw whales playing hard by us; of 

 which in that place, if we had instruments and means to take them, we might have 

 made a very rich return ; which, to our great grief, we wanted. Our master and 

 his mate, and others experienced in fishing, professed we might have made three or 

 four thousand pounds' worth of oil. They preferred it before Greenland whale- 

 fishing, and purpose the next winter to fish for whale here." ' 



In the same Journal, among the arguments brought forward for the establish- 

 ment of a settlement at Pamet River, on Cape Cod, is the following : 



[1620. CAPE COD, MASS. BRADFORD'S AND WINSLOW'S "JOURNAL."] 



"Thirdly, Cape Cod was like to be a place of good fishing; for we saw daily 

 great whales, of the best kind for oil and bone, come close aboard our sLip, and, in 

 fair weather, swim and play about us. There was once one, when the sun shone 

 warm, came and lay above water, as if she had been dead, for a good while to- 

 gether, within half a musket shot of the ship; at which two were prepared to 

 shoot, to see whether she would stir or no. He that gave fire first, his musket flew 

 in pieces, both stock and barrel ; yet, thanks be to God, neither he nor any man 

 else was hurt with it, though many were there about. But when the whale saw 

 her time, she gave a snuff, and away." * 



An account of a voyage to New England in 1629 contains the following 

 reference to whales : 



"This day [June 24] we had all a cleare and comfortable sight of America, 

 and of the Cape Sable that was over against us 7 or 8 leagues northward. Here 

 we saw yellow gilliflowers on the sea. 



"Thursday [25 l . h June] wind still N. E. a full and fresh gale. In the afternoon 

 we had a cleare sight of many islands and hills by the sea shoare. Now we saw 

 abundance of raackrill, a great store of great whales puffing up water as they goe, 



1 YOUNG, ALEX., Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers of the Colony of Plymouth from 1602 to 

 1625, Boston, 1841, p. 119. Bradford's and Winslow's Journal. Young comments on this para- 

 graph as follows: 



" Whales are frequently seen in Barnstable Bay and on the outside of the Cape, and are killed 

 by boats from Provincetown. Occasionally, though more rarely of late, they come into the harbour ; 

 at the beginning of the present century, two or three whales, producing about a hundred barrels of 

 oil, were annually caught ; the last that was killed in the harbour was in Dec., 1840, a humpback, 

 that made fifty barrels of oil. The appearance of a whale in the harbour is the signal for a general 

 stir among the hundred graceful five-hand boats that line the circling shore of this beautiful bay. 

 The American whale fishery commenced at Cape Cod, where it was carried on entirely in boats, 

 which put off whenever a signal was given by persons on the look out from an elevated station, 

 that a whale was seen to blow. In 1690 'one Ichabod Paddock ' went from the Cape to Nantucket 

 to teach the inhabitants of that isle the art and mystery of catching whales. See Mass. Hist. Coll. 

 (i), in, 157." 



1 Op. fit., p. 146. 



