66 COMMON WHALE. Class IV. 



before we attempted the trade, and that for the 

 sake not only of the oil, but also of the whale- 

 bone, which they seem to have long trafficked 

 in. The earliest notice we find of that article 

 in our trade is by Hackluyt, * who says it was 

 brought from the Bay of St. Laurence by an 

 English ship that went there for the barbes and 

 fynnes of whales and train oil, A. D. 1594, and 

 who found there seven or eight hundred whale 

 fynnes, part of the cargo of two great Biskaine 

 ships, that had been wrecked there three years 

 before. Previous to that, the ladies' stays must 

 have been made of split cane, or some tough 

 wood, as Mr. Anderson observes in his Dic- 

 tionary of Commerce, f it being certain that the 

 whale fishery was carried on, for the sake of the 

 oil, long before the discovery of the use of whale- 

 bone. 



The great resort of these animals was found 

 to be on the inhospitable shores of Spitzbergen, 

 and the European ships made that place their 

 principal fishery, and for numbers of years were 

 very successful : the English commenced that 

 business about the year 1598, and the town of 

 Hull had the honor of first attempting that pro- 

 fitable branch of trade. At present it seems to 

 be on the decline, the quantity of fish being 



* Hackluyfs Col. voy. III. ig4. f Vol. I. 442. 



