84 VOYAGE INTO 



By Spitzhergen we see but a few of them, but instead of 

 them there is plenty of sea-horses. Where many seales are 

 seen, that is not a good place to catch whales in. It seem- 

 eth as if they leave but very little for the whale to live upon, 

 because there is so great a number of them. They feed upon 

 small fishes, as far as I could understand ; we cut open 

 several of them, and found nothing in their stomachs but 

 great and long whitish worms of the thickness of ones little 

 finger. We come up to them where they lye upon the large 

 sheets of ice ; we make a great noise with shouting, which 

 astonisheth them perhaps, or else out of novelty they hold 

 up their noses very high, and make a long neck, as our 

 grey-hounds do, and bark. In this fright of theirs we strike 

 them with half-pikes, or long poles upon their noses, and 

 knock them down half dead, but for all that they recover 

 themselves and rise again. Some of them stand upon their 

 defence, bite at, and run after the men ; and they run as fast 

 as a man, and their lame way of going doth not hinder them 

 at all, for they shove themselves along just like an eel. Some 

 run from the ice to the water, and leave a yellow dung be- 

 hind them, which they squirt out at their hunters, as the 

 hern does : they stink naturally abominably. Others stand in 

 the water with half their belly, and look about them to see 

 what is done upon the ice. When they are going to dive 

 under the water, they hold up their noses and make a long 

 neck : when they jump from the ice under water, and also 

 when they make a dance of seales, as they call it, about the 

 ships, they constantly dive with their heads under water. 

 They have their young ones by them, one whereof we took 

 away with us to the ship alive, but it would not eat anything, 

 but did mew just like a cat, and if we touch'd him he would 

 snap at us, so we killed him. The biggest of them that I have 

 seen were from five to eight foot long, out of which we cut 

 so much fat, that we filled half a barrel with it. Their fat is 

 about three or four fingers thick, it covers the fiesh just under 



