R. BROWN ON THE CETACEA OF GREENLAND. 81 



ships arrive generally too late, and the weather at that season is 

 too tempestuous to render the " South - west Fishing " very 

 attractive. Later in the year the ships enter Cumberland Sound 

 in great numbers ; and many of them (especially American and . 

 Peterhead vessels) now make a regular practice of wintering there 

 in order to attack the Whales in early spring. It is said that 

 early in September they enter Cumberland (Hogarth's) Sound in 

 great numbers and remain until it is completely frozen up, which, 

 according to Eskimo account, is not until the month of January. 

 It is also affirmed by the natives that when they undertake long 

 journeys over the ice in spring, when hunting for young Seals, 

 they see Whales in great numbers at the edge of the ice-floe. 

 They enter the Sound again in the spring and remain until the 

 heat of summer has entirely melted off the land-floes in these 

 comparatively southern latitudes. It thus appears that they winter 

 (and produce their young) all along the broken water off the 

 coast of the southern portions of Davis Strait, Hudson's Strait, 

 and Labrador. The ice remaining longer on the western than on 

 the eastern shore of Davis Strait, and thus impeding their northern 

 progress, they cross to the Greenland coast ; but, as at that season 

 there is little land-ice south of 65°, they are rarely found south of 

 that latitude. They then remain here until the land-floes have 

 broken up, when they cross to the western shores of the Strait, 

 where we find them in July. I am strongly of belief that the 

 Whales of the Spitzbergen sea never, as a body, visit Davis Strait, 

 but winter somewhere in the open water at the southern edge of 

 the northern ice-fields. The Whales are being gradually driven 

 further north, and are now rarely found, even by their traces,* so 

 far south as tlie Island of Jan Mayen (71° N. lat.), round which 

 they were so numerous in the palmy days of the Dutch whaling 

 trade. I am not quite sure, after all that has been said on this 

 subject, that the Whale is getting extinct, and am beginning to 

 entertain convictions that its supposed scarcity in recent times is 

 a great deal owing to its escaping to remote, less known, and less 

 visited localities. It is said to be coming back again to the coast 

 of Greenland, now that the hot pursuit of it has slackened in that 

 portion of Davis Strait. The varying success of the trade is 

 owing not so much to the want of Whales as to the ill luck of the 

 vessels in coming across their haunts. Every now and again 

 cargoes equal to anything that was obtained in the best days of 

 the trade are obtained. Fourteen years ago I came home to 

 England " shipmates " (as the phrase goes) with no less than 

 thirty Eight Whales, in addition to a miscellaneous menagerie of 

 Arctic animals dead and alive, and a motley human crew — a 

 company so outre that I question if ever naturalist, or even whaler, 

 sailed with the like before. 



* The recent visit of Whales to a particular locality can frequently be 

 known by a peculiar oiliness floating on the water, and (the whalers say, 

 though I confess I was never sensible of it) an unmistakeable odour charac- 

 teristic of this Cetacean. 



36122. xf 



