12 ESCHRICHT AND REINHARDT 



in enormous masses round the south pomt of Greenland from the east into Davis Strait, 

 certainly follows the shore upwards as far as the factory of Fi-ederikshaab (62°) ; but it is generally 

 scattered and carried away before the current takes it fui-ther northwards, so that it is seldom 

 seen, even at Godthaab.^ Thus, we can hardly be mistaken when we see more than a mere 

 accident in this correspondence between the range of the west-ice and that of the Greenland whale. 

 The predilection of the whale for the ice and the waters filled with ice-floes seems to make it 

 perfectly clear why, in its southward migrations at the advance of winter, it never extends its 

 wanderings to the part of the sea south of Sukkertoppen, which is almost always free from ice. 

 Nor is it difficult to point out the reason why, in the very high latitudes near the Pole, it leaves 

 its summer stations towards the close of autumn ; for in the winter it would eventually run the 

 risk of being suffocated beneath the huge coherent masses of ice which, at this season of the 

 year, cover the greater part of the polar sea and the northern part of Baffin's Bay. Even in its 

 more southerly winter stations it seems now and then to meet with such a fate, for in a 

 manuscript account by Mr. Geelmuyden of an expedition to Greenland, in the year 1750, on 

 board the Jubelfesten,^ of which he was the supercargo, we find a statement that in that year 

 the masses of ice in Disco Bay were uncommonly large, staying there until the year was far 

 advanced ; that the fishing, therefore, generally speaking, had been very bad, but that the 

 Greenlanders had been fortunate enough near the Dogs' and Whales' Islands, at the outlet of 

 Disco Bay, to find no less than fourteen whales, " som af sig selv under Isen har maattet crepere" 

 (which had perished by themselves beneath the ice), which words can scarcely be interpreted in 

 any other way but that these whales had lost themselves beneath the solid masses of ice covering 

 the bay, and had been suffocated, or, as it were, drowTied there. 



The statements given above show us the strict regularity with which the whale appears 

 along the western coast of Greenland. But at the same time another question — whether its range 

 has formerly been greater — seems at any rate partially to have been decided by them. For the 

 two tables, as given above, stating the appearance and disappearance of the whale at Holsteinsborg 

 and Godhavn, will show that the whale, at least eighty years ago, made its appearance exactly at 

 the same places and at the same seasons as at present, and that not the slightest alteration has 

 taken place in this respect. If we endeavour to ascertain how the case stood in times of still 

 greater antiquity, it must be admitted that no such detailed accounts as we possess for the last 

 eighty years can now be obtained ; but, at the same time, we have a sufficient number of state- 

 ments to prove that in the year 1721, when the first Danish missionaries began their work, the 

 whale made its appearance at the coast at the same season as now ; for this statement seems to 

 be borne out, not only by the circumstance that no whaling establishments have ever been 

 attempted near the southern factories, but also by the reports made by Egede, in reference to 

 his endeavours to bring about a whale-fishery that might remunerate the trading company 

 at Bergen, on which fhe mission, in the beginning, depended,^ and thus secure the subsistence 

 of the enterprise. He states expressly that neither does the Greenland whale approach to the 



■' Eink, H., ' Gronland geogr. og statist beskrevet,' 2det Bind., Kbhvn., 1857, S. 122. 



^ It is to the late Dr. Pingel that we are indebted for the use of this as well as of other old 

 papers relating to whale-fishery. 



^ Egede, H., ' Eelation om den Grønlandske Missions Begyndelse og Fortsættelse,' Kbhvn., 1738, 

 4to, pp. 48 and 95. 



