SPIT/HEROEN AND (JREENLAND. 113 



hiave said before^ is fastened to it, but very soft ; but it costs 

 too much labour to cut it out. The fat of some whales is 

 much thicker than that of others, as it is with other animals 

 Dr men, where one is much leaner than another. In the fat 

 are little sinews interspers'd, which hold the oyl, as a sponge 

 doth water, which one may squeeze out. The other strong 

 sinews arc chiefly about the tail, where it is thinnest, for 

 with it he turns and winds himself as a ship is turn'd by the 

 rudder ; but his finns are his oars, and according to his big- 

 ness he rows himself along with them as swiftly as a bird 

 flies, and doth make a long track in the sea, as a great ship 

 doth when under sail, so that it remains divided for a while. 



The whales of the North Cape (they are so called because 

 they are caught between Spitzhcrgeti and Norway) being 

 not so big, therefore do not yield so much fat as those of 

 Spitsbergen, for of those of the North Cape you shall not All 

 above ten, twenty, or thirty cardels of fat ; the middling sort 

 of those of Sjntzbergen yield commonly seventy, eighty, or 

 ninety, and they are about fifty or sixty foot long. Our 

 biggest ivhale was fifty- three foot long, and we cut off" him 

 as much fat as filled seventy cardels ; his tail Avas about three 

 fathoms and a half broad. The skipper, Peter Peterson, 

 of Frieslancl, informed me that they found a dead whale, 

 whereof they did cut as much fat as fill'd one hundred and 

 thirty cardels ; his tail was three fathom and an half broad, 

 but he was not much longer than our biggest, as one may 

 guess by the tail also, yet much thicker and fatter ; from 

 whence one may infer that they do not grow much longer, 

 but only in thickness or fatness, as we daily see. Nor did I 

 ever hear that a bigger or fatter whale was ever caught, and 

 even those but seldom, for if there were many such our ships 

 could not hold so much as is cut from ten, fifteen, or twenty 

 whales, as some of them have sometimes taken in. 



Over the fat is, besides the uppermost thin skin already 

 described, another skin of about an inch thick, proportion- 



