90 VOYAGE INTO 



the ice, or when he diveth with his head under water, for 

 then his skin is smooth and extended, and therefore the har- 

 poon striketh through the skin on his back the better : but 

 when he lyeth and sleepeth his skin is loose and wrinkled, so 

 that the harpoon doth not pierce the skin, but falls off. The 

 harpoon for a sea-horse, and the laimce also, are short, of the 

 length of one span, or one and a half, and an inch thick, and 

 the wooden staff thereof is about six foot long ; the harpoon 

 for a whale is much too weak to pierce his thick skin withal, 

 yet both of them are very well temper'd and of good tough 

 iron, and not much hardened. When the sea-horse is killed, 

 they take the head only and leave the rest ; this they carry 

 on board, where they cut out the teeth ; the two great ones 

 belong to the owners or merchants of the ship, but the small 

 teeth are not esteemed. I cannot but mention that we went 

 by a field of ice, where so many sea-horses lay, that the 

 weight of them made the ice even with the water ; but when 

 they jumped off into the sea, we could hardly step out of our 

 boat upon it, so high was it risen out of the water. It was re- 

 lated to me, by them that iised this Greenland trade every 

 year, as a certaine truth, that once when they had no good 

 fortune to catch whales, they rowed with their boats to the 

 Miifs Island, which was full of sea-horses ; they ventured 

 upon them couragiously with cutting, striking, pushing, and 

 shouting, so that they killed a great many of them ; but when 

 they saw that still more and more of them got together, they 

 laid the dead sea-horses round about them, and stood in the 

 middle of them as in a castle, leaving a place open where 

 the others might come into them, as through a gate ; and after 

 this manner they have killed several hundreds of them, and 

 made a good voyage of it ; for some years ago their teeth 

 have been in greater esteem than now. 



