ON THE GREENLAND RIGHT-WHALE. 37 



essaient de s'en dedommager, en allant pecher les Sardes on petites Baleines dont nous venons 

 de parler."^ 



The Dutch and German whalers do not seem to have hunted the " Sarde/' or, as they used 

 to call it, the " Nordkaper," so eagerly as the Basques ; it was not until the whale-fishery near 

 Spitzbergen was in operation that they began regularly to send out whalers, and therefore the 

 Greenland whale was, if not exclusively, yet most commonly hunted by them. Accordingly, it 

 would scarcely seem strange if no particular information were to be obtained from them 

 about the right-whale which was less important to them. Nevertheless it is mentioned both 

 by Martens and Zorgdrager, and by both as a species different from the Greenland whale, and an 

 object of hunting. The latter author has a whole chapter in which, in his peculiar prolix 

 style of writing, he informs lis about the range of the " Nordkaper,^' stating that he is fully 

 convinced that neither does this whale ever appear within the range of the Greenland whale in the 

 northernmost seas ; nor does, on the other hand, the Greenland whale appear within the more 

 southerly range of the " Nordkaper ;" at all events, he adds, he has neither himself seen such an 

 instance, nor has he heard it mentioned by others.' It is, however, very doubtful whether he 

 ever had an opportimity of being acquainted with the " Nordkaper" from personal examination. 

 The doubt he expresses whether the whalebone in this Cetacean grows as far back in the throat 

 as it does in the Greenland whale renders it improbable that he can himself have seen it caught 

 and killed; nor does he, with the exception of the statement that it yields only twenty or forty 

 " cordelen" of blubber (scarcely half of what the Greenland whale is said by him to yield), and 

 that the blubber is more compact than that of the latter, tell us anything about its other charac- 

 teristics. We find it, however, stated by him that the " Nordkaper" is said to live on fish ; and 

 he even thinks himself enabled by that circumstance to explain why this whale is found especially 

 in the sea near the coasts of Iceland and most northerly ' part of Norway. Now, although the 

 " Nordkaper," if such were the case, would imquestionably form an exception to the rest of the 

 right-whales, yet we should hardly think it right if for this reason alone we rejected the possibility 

 of its being a fish-eating animal ; but Zorgdrager only supposes it to be so, and he is evidently led 

 into this supposition chiefly by a statement which he quotes from Martens, that a " Nordkaper, 

 caught near Hetland, had more than one cask of herrings in it.'' It is, therefore, properly speaking, 

 Martens that is responsible for this 3tatement,and as he says expresslythat he has it only from others,* 

 wc have no sufficient surety as to its authenticity, nor any certainty that the word " Nordkaper" 

 may not in this case be raisapphed to the Avhale caught near Hetland. As for the rest of Martens's 

 account of the " Nordkaper," it is much to the same effect as Zorgdrager's statements ; ue evidently 

 considers it as a proved fact that it is different from the Greenland whale ; and it is clear that on 

 this head he only repeats the statement most current among the whalers of his time. He alludes 

 to its inferior size, smaller quantity of blubber, and fierce temper which renders it more dangerous 

 to hunt than the Greenland whale ; but all his statements seem to be only at second hand. He 

 tells us, to be sure, that on his return he witnessed, in a storm near Hetland, a violent struggle 

 between a "Nordka])er" and some killers (" schwcrdfische ") ; but even if in this case it were a 



^ 1. c. Sec. Partic. T. iv (17G!)), Sect. X, p. 10. 

 " Zorgdrager, the German translation. Leipzig, 17.'23, p. 111. 

 ' I.e. 



^ Martens. Fr. Spitzbcrgisehe odcr (lroc'nl;ii:d;sclie Rcisc-lkscliicibinig gctliau im Jalir, 1(171, 

 Tlaiiilnug, 1C75, p. 107. 



