26 ESCHRICHT AND REINHARDT 



Now, this peculiarity is certainly very far from being decisive ; yet we ought not, on the other 

 hand, to leave it totally unregarded, especially as the existence of a species of whale very 

 nearly resembling the Greenland whale, yet distinct from it, seems to be rendered, to a 

 certain degree, probable by a pencil drawing of a fragment of the skull of a whale which 

 Middendorf's fellow-traveller, during his journey in Siberia, found thrown up on the beach 

 of the Okhotsk Sea ; for this drawing, of which the celebrated traveller has been kind enough 

 to send us a copy, seems to show that the skull was that of a whale, which, though certainly 

 much more nearly related to the Greenland whale than to the common South- sea right- whales 

 found in the Pacific, yet might perhaps be different from the former, at least if the drawing be 

 correct. 



Now, whether this south-ice fish of the ancient Dutch whalers was different from the west-ice 

 fish or not, it is certain that the whale, quite at the beginning of the whale-fishery near Spitzbergen, 

 four years after the second discovery of this island by Hudson, was as closely attached to the ice 

 of the Polar Sea there as on the coast of Greenland, and that in that region also it changes its 

 place according to the seasons. The physical condition of the district would not very well permit 

 the whale-fishery to begin until the end of April or the beginning of May, but when the whalers 

 reached the place at that time they found plenty of whales, which continued to stay there until 

 the month of July, when they disappeared, and that frequently almost at once ; no doubt because 

 the enormous masses of ice that had been covering the sea at that time began to break, so that 

 the way northwards and north-westwards became by that means opened to them. Even the 

 ancient whalers knew very well that they could not hope to find the whale except in very high 

 latitudes. Accordingly, they did not begin to distribute the crews to the different whalers' boats 

 until they had reached the Polar circle; there they began to adjust the harpoons and the harpoon 

 lines, to distribute lances, blubber-knives, and the rest of the fishing apparatus ; in short, to make 

 the ship ready for the commencement of the fishing ;^ besides, Zorgdrager not only repeatedly 

 points out the fact that the ice-wbales (for such is the significant name he gives to them) never 

 leave the sea that is filled with ice, but at the same time he attempts to give a minute account of 

 the reason of this peculiarity forming part of the nature of these whales, in opposition to another 

 whale, " the Northcaper," which shuns the ice as much as the former seeks it. The coasts ^nd 

 bays of Spitzbergen and Jan Mayen were, as is generally known, the places where the fishing was 

 first put in train ; and later, when it was removed into the Arctic Sea itself, it was only carried 

 on in the high latitudes, between 70° and 80°. Even Bareneiland or Cherie Island, situated 

 only a short distance southward of Spitzbergen, does not seem to have been visited by whales, at 

 least not at the season when the whale-fishery took place. For Stephen Bennet and Jonas Poole, 

 from 1603 to 1609, had undertaken seven voyages to this island to kill walruses, without ever 

 thinking of attempting to fish whales ; nay, whales are not even mentioned in the accounts of six 

 of these voyages,^ preserved in Purchas's work ; while, on the other hand, the same Jonas Poole, 

 on his Polar expedition in 1610, had no sooner visited Spitzbergen, and brought home the news 

 of the great numbers of whales seen there, tlian the whale-fishery was commenced there the 



^ Martens, F., ' Spitzbergische Raise Beschreibung gathan im Jahr, 1671' (Hamburg, 1675), p. 2. 

 Zorgdrager, C. G., ' Alte und neue Gronlandische Fischerei und Wallfischfang' (Leipzig, 1723), 

 p. 411. 



" ' Pilgrimes,' part iii, pp. 556 — 567. 



