270 SALMON FISHING IN CANADA. 



he had just witnessed of the danger of navigating the polar 

 seas in high northern latitudes. 



" On returning to England he made various inquiries 

 respecting vessels that had disappeared in an unknown 

 way ; and by comparing these results with the information 

 which was afforded by the written documents in his pos- 

 session, he ascertained the name and history of the impri- 

 soned ship and of her unfortunate master, and found that 

 she had been frozen in thirteen years previous to the time 

 of his discovering her imprisoned in the ice." 



The most dreadful display of the whale's strength and 

 prowess, which, upon any occasion, was mentioned as being 

 authentically recorded, was that made upon the American 

 whale-ship "Essex," Captain Pollard, which sailed from 

 Nantucket for the Pacific Ocean in August 1819. Late 

 in the fall of the same year, when in latitude forty of the 

 South Pacific, a school of sperm whales was discovered, 

 and three boats were manned and sent in pursuit. The 

 mate's boat was struck by one of them, and he was obliged 

 to return to the ship in order to repair the damage. While 

 he was engaged in that work, a sperm whale, judged to be 

 eighty-five feet long, broke water about twenty yards from 

 the ship on her weather-bow. He was going at the rate of 

 about three knots an hour, and the ship at nearly the same 

 rate, when he struck the bows of the vessel just forward of 

 her chains. 



At the shock produced by the collision of two such 



