ON THE GREENLAND RIGHT- WHALE. 17 



there during tlie summer ; and from this circumstance alone it will be seen that the whale must 

 have remained in the Gulf of St. Lawrence long after the ice had disappeared. This is also 

 expressly stated in accounts, still preserved, of several of these earlier voyages to Newfoundland and 

 the coasts around the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Thus, we read in the account of Jaques Cartier's 

 second voyage, in the year 1535, that the sailors, on the 18th of August, near Assumption Island 

 (afterwards called by travellers Anticosti), saw more whales than they could remember ever having 

 seen before.^ In John Jane's description of John Davis's third voyage, 1587, we are told that the 

 ship, on its return, met with a great many whales in the middle of August, about latitude 52°, 

 near the coast of Labrador, which was still in sight on the 15th of August; and that on the 

 17th of the same month they met with a vessel beating against the wind, which they supposed to 

 be a whaler from Biscay.' Still more precise are the statements in the description of a whali ng 

 expedition, on which the ship "Grace of Bristoll" was sent in the year 1594. This whaler 

 left Bristol on the 4th of April, and arrived at Newfoundland on the 20th of May, where it was 

 lucky enough to find in St. George's Bay the wrecks of two large Biscayan whalers, from which 

 were taken 700 or 800 pieces of whalebone, but it was not particularly fortunate in its own 

 fishing, the people losing the whales harpooned. In the middle of June they went to 

 the Island Natiscotec (Anticosti), because they had heard that the whales which were 

 wounded, and escaped their pursuers, were commonly, when dead, drifted ashore there ; they, 

 however, sought in vain for the whales which they had struck, and then sailed home again on the 

 24th of August.^ If, however, we need a witness from a more recent time, we may find one in 

 Charlevoix, who both informs us that as many as fifty whales might be seen at once near the 

 outlet of Mantane in the River St. Lawrence, and that he himself, in the month of August, 1705, 

 at anchor off Tadousac, saw whales swimming round the vessel and coming so near to the boats 

 that they might be reached by the oars ;* and furthermore, points it out as an advantage of th e 

 whale-fishery in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, that it takes place in the summer, and not in the 

 winter.^ 



But we should at least hesitate before we conclude that the whale tumbhng about the Gulf 



^ Marc Lescarbot, ' Histoire de la nouvelle France,' 4me ed., Paris, 1624, p. 285. In this place 

 we read in Lescarbot, " baillames." "Whether the same word is found in the oldest Frencli text, 

 which we have not been able to compare, and as to whether in that case it is to be considered as a 

 provincialism, or merely as a slip of the pen, we shall advance no opinion. But it seems never to 

 have been doubted that whales were meant by that word, for in the Italian text inserted in the work 

 of Eamusio we read " balene," and in the English translation in Hakluyt's work we read " whales." 

 See Ramusio, ' Delle Navigation! et Viaggi,' volume terzo, p. 377, in the edition printed at Venice, 

 1606; and Hakluyt, 'Voyages, Navigations,' &c., 3 vols. (London, 1600), p. 213. 



"' Hakluyt, ' Voyages, Navigations, &c.,' 3 vols. (London, 1600), p. 114. 



^ ' The Voyage of the Grace of Bristol, of M. Rice Jones, a Barke of thirty-fiue Tunnes, vp into 

 the Bay of Saint Laurence, to the North-west of Newefoundland, as farre as the Isle of Assumption or 

 Natiscotec, for the barbes or fynnes of Whales and traine Oyle, made by Siluester Wyet, shipmaster, 

 of Bristoll,' in Hakluyt, iii, p. 194. 



* Charlevoix, ' Histoire et description generate de la nouvelle France, avec le journal historique 

 d'un voyage fai par ordre du Roi dans l'Amérique Septentrionale,' Paris, 1744, vol. i, p. 540. 



■' Loc. cit. vol. ii, p. 394 " . . la peche (des Baleines) qui est d'autant plus aisee en cet 

 endroit, quelle ce fait pendant l'été et non pas en hyver." 



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