22 THE WHALE AND 



DuVe'-ent Whale Catchers. Dutch Whale Diggings. 



whale's tonguer, were among the table delica- 

 cies of the Middle Ages. 



When this branch of industry failed with 

 them, by reason of whales ceasing to visit the 

 Bay of Biscay, the English and Dutch, taught 

 by the Biscayans, l who were best experienced in 

 that facultie of whale-striking,' took it up in the 

 Northern Seas, where the gigantic game was 

 then every where found in vast numbers by 

 navigators in search of the northern passage to 

 the Indies. By the middle of the seventeenth 

 century, the Dutch had built the considerable 

 village of Smeerenburg, on the Isle of Amster- 

 dam, along the northern shore of Spitzbergen, 

 within only eleven degrees of the North Pole, 

 where the unbroken night is from September 

 to March, and the day from March to Septem- 

 ber. This was the great rendezvous of Dutch 

 whale ships, and it being their practice to boil 

 the blubber on shore, it was amply provided 

 with boilers, tanks, and all the apparatus then 

 used for preparing the oil and bone. 



This fishing colony of the frozen zone, an in- 

 cidental fruit of those daring adventures after 

 a northeast route to India, was founded nearly 

 at the same time with Batavia in the East, and 



