20 ESCHRICHT AND REINHARDT. 



(Pontoppidan, in liis information about the capture of ^yllales and seals, page 56, tells us, 

 tliat in Davis Strait, as well as near Spitzbergen, small and unequal whales are found. Now, it 

 is true that small whales are sometimes caught in Davis Strait, but they are cubs of the great 

 whalebone whale, and not of different species. One whale, however, was caught in the winter 

 1782, containing ten or twelve " cordels "^ of blubber, and whose greatest whalebone had a 

 length of five feet ; but this was only the second that had been caught during seventy years, and 

 it was called by the Greenlanders an east-coast whale. Then, it was also different in the shape of its 

 body from the right or common whale, having, as it were, a hump on its neck behind ; its skin, in 

 Greenland called "mattak," was bluish, and smoother and thicker than that of the whales of the 

 right sort, which are quite black, and white about the belly. The whalebone was, in proportion to its 

 length, much thicker than that of the common whalebone-whale of Davis Strait, and from all its 

 parts it was easy to see that it was an old whale, yet its blubber was more tender, and not so 

 tendinous as that of a common full-grown whalebone-whale.) 



What the Greenlanders meant by calling this whale an east-coast whale will, we think, be 

 very difficult to explain, this name being only a translation, more or less exact, of a Greenlandic 

 word not given by the narrators, nor is this question of any great consequence ; but what parti- 

 cularly attracts our attention is that, in the case here narrated, we have another proof of the 

 existence of a right-whale in the north of the Atlantic, easily to be distinguished from the Green- 

 land whale by its smaller quantity of blubber, perhaps also by a different colour, but especially 

 by much shorter whalebone, and, accordingly, a great difference in the shape of the head ; and it 

 can hardly be doubted but that we are right in supposing that this whale, whose appearance in 

 Davis Strait is quite an excejition to the general rule, was the same as the right-whale from 

 Newfoundland and New England mentioned by Dudley and Hector St. John. We shall after- 

 wards revert to this right-whale with short whalebone, of Avhich we have been able to 

 gather much information in works of modern and ancient date ; but for the present it 

 will be sufficient to have shown its existence, and we shall now return to the question 

 that occasioned this digression, the question about the hmits of the southward range of the 

 Greenland right- whale. 



We have seen that a right-whale, totally different from the Greenland whale, and certainly 

 known to have been caught at different times by the immigrated population of New England, 

 has been, and we suppose may still be,'' living in the sea along the shores of Acadia and New 

 England, and, no doubt, also near the adjoining shores of Newfoundland. It is almost impos- 

 sible, but that the Basques must have known it, and met with it on their navigations to New- 

 foundland in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and it is probable that it was this whale with 

 short whalebone which they used to fish in the sea around this island. For although we are told 

 by Dudley that the proper time for catching it near the coast of New England is from the 



^ The okl Dutch whale-fishers used to call the tuns or casks in which the blubber was placed 

 " Cordeel" or " Kardeel." They contained sixty-four gallons each. 



- In the Map No. 1 of Series F, of the ' Whale Chart of the World,' compiled by Captain 

 Maury, from a large number of ships' logs, and representing North America, with both the adjoining 

 oceans, down to 20° north latitude and from 1° to 180° west longitude, it is stated that right-whales 

 have been commonly met with in the Atlantic from 35° up to 45° of latitude between the months of 

 May and October. 



