162 NEWFOUNDLAND 



These hardy old sea-rovers, together with a small per- 

 centage of French and Portuguese, fished on the Grand 

 Banks, or killed the seal and walrus in early spring to the 

 north and west. It was not, however, until about 1550, that 

 the Spanish Basques, who had long chased the Great Southern 

 Right Whale {Balcsna atistralis) in the stormy waters of the 

 Bay of Biscay, inaugurated the whaling industry in the 

 Newfoundland seas. 



It is a common fallacy amongst the British, that we were 

 the first nation to commence whaling. It was the Basques 

 who first chased the seal and the walrus,^ and afterwards 

 taught our people the dangerous business of whale-killing. 

 The very word " harpoon " is derived from an old Basque 

 word " harpon." Yet though the English ruled all then in 

 Newfoundland, as they had maintained their supremacy 

 hundreds of years before in the Iceland cod-fishery, whaling 

 was a trade they had to learn and did learn. For courtesy 

 the chief post, that of whale-killer, was held by a Basque 

 " harponier," just as the Norwegians are the first of whale- 

 men to-day. 



Up to 1800 the whales were pursued in open boats, and 

 struck with the hand harpoon; about 1830 the small bomb 

 came into use ; soon after which date whales were found too 

 difficult and dangerous to hunt, the Right Whale (probably 

 Balana australis, not Balcsna mysticetus) having almost com- 

 pletely disappeared. The last Right Whale killed in New- 

 foundland was taken near Gaultois, on the south coast, 

 in 1850. 



In the year 1880, a Norwegian sailor named Svend Foyn, 

 after several ineffectual attempts to kill the great Balcenoptera 



' This of course only refers to our colonial hunting. The Norwegians had for 

 long exploited the waters of Spitsbergen for the chase of these animals. 



