THE GREENLAND WHALE 387 



cayan Whale, or Nordkaper, to which latter our whaling 

 ca,ptains sometimes restrict the name Right Whale. 



The Greenland Whale is the true Polar Whale, and 

 is never found very far from the edge of the ice (Fig. 218) ; 

 it is, unfortunately, on the high road to extinction. In 

 the seventeenth century it was the object of an immense 

 fishery, shared by Holland, England, and France, 

 and the great Dutch settlement of Smeerenberg, in 

 Spitzbergen, employed at one time (about the year 

 i()8o) 260 ships and over 14,000 men. Those were the 

 great days of the Arctic whale fishery. Oil was the 

 great object of the trade, for whalebone was as yet 

 of little value ; the cities of Europe were lighted with 

 whale-oil, and the slaughter was prodigious. Before 

 long the whales became very scarce in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Spitzbergen, where the Greenland Whale 

 appears to be now totally extinct ; it appears also to 

 be nowadays absent from the east side of Greenland, 

 and it is not known from the north coast of Asia, 

 eastward of Spitzbergen, until we get very near to 

 Behring Straits. The British whale fishers have at all 

 times chiefly resorted to Davis Straits. Up to the 

 beginning of the last century almost every East Coast 

 port sent out its whalers, but at present about four 

 vessels from Dundee are all that is left of the dwindling 

 fleet. Between 1788 and 1879, 8,415 whales were 

 brought into Scottish harbours ; the present yearly 

 average is something like half a dozen. Another fleet 

 of whalers still sails from San Francisco to the Sea of 

 Ochotsk and the Behring Sea, and in summer-time 

 through Behring Straits to Point Barrow and Herschel 

 Island. In 1893 the fleet captured 293 whales. Some 

 naturalists are inclined to think that we have, or had, 

 three great tribes or races of the Greenland Whale, 

 appertaining respectively to Spitzbergen, to Davis 



