1881.] THE BASaUE PROVINCES OF SPAIN. 973 



sixteenth century. To the left of the inscription there is carved a 

 harpooned whale, with the line fastened to a boat, in which are two 

 men. Don Nicolas de Soraluce, the learned historian of Guipuzcoa, 

 told me that an old resident in Zarauz, named Belaunzaran, liad 

 often spoken to him of the feat recorded on tliis stone slab, adding 

 that he used to hear his grandmother explain that the carving 

 represented the harpooning and killing of a whale by two young 

 sailors in a single boat. This deed was considered worthy of being 

 handed down to posterity ; and the stone was therefore placed over 

 the door of the house of these two brothers, or, as some say, a father 

 and son. 



There are some other records as to the disposition of the whalebone. 

 By an order dated Nov. 20th, 14/4, the town of Guetaria gave half 

 the value of each whale towards the repair of the church and of 

 the boat-harbour. In San Sebastian, according to an ancient custom, 

 the whalebone was given to the '' Cofradia''' (brotherhood) "of 

 San Pedro." 



It is clear that the whales, close along the coast, became very 

 scarce in the middle of the seventeenth century, when the entries 

 at Lequeitio cease, and that the Basque sailors then began to seek 

 the means of exercising their special craft by making long voyages, 

 even to the Arctic regions. Such voyages were occasionally made 

 at a still earlier period. It is stated by Madoz that a pilot of Zarauz 

 named Matias de Echeveste was the first Spaniard who visited the 

 banks of Newfoundland, and that, according to a mem.oir written by 

 his son, he made 28 voyages from 1545 to 1599, the year of 

 his death. In the accounts of the first English whaling voyages 

 to Spitzbergen, in the collection of Purchas, we read of Basque 

 ships from San Sebastian frequenting those Arctic seas in search of 

 whales, and of the overbearing way in which their captains were often 

 treated by the Enghsh. Nevertheless the English were glad to 

 ohtain the help of the Basque sailors to do for them the most perilous 

 and diificult part of the work, namely the harpooning and killing of 

 the whales. 



I gather from Eschricht and Reinhardt's memoir that this 

 Biscayan whale was known to the French Basques as the "Sarde," 

 and was the same as the " Nordl'aper" of the Dutch and North 

 Germans, and the " Uletbay " of Iceland, a whalebone whale, but 

 smaller and more active than the great Greenland Whale. The 

 Konge-speil (an ancient Norwegian record) has a passage to the effect 

 that " those who travel on the sea fear it much ; for its nature is to 

 play much with vessels." Belonging to the temperate North Atlantic, 

 it is described as much more active than the Greenland Whale, much 

 quicker and more violent in its movements, more difficult and 

 dangerous to catch. It is smaller and has less blubber than the 

 B. imjsticetus, the head shorter, and the whalebone much thicker 

 but scarcely more thair half as long. 



For centuries the Basques had attacked and captured this for- 

 midable Cetacean ; and they, in fact, monopolized all the experience 

 and skill which then existed in connexion with the craft and mys- 



