41 MAMMAilA. 



one of its blow-Holes, followed it to tlie bottom of the sea, came up 

 again with it to the surface, closed the other blow-hole with a 

 second plug, and so caused it to die of suffocation. This is simply- 

 impossible. 



The ancient Esquimaux employed in attacking the "WTiale a very 

 ingenious system, which thej still put in practice at the present 

 day. They surround the Whale they want to take in little canoes. 

 Those who man these canoes, throw at it arrows or harpoons, 

 attached to hollow balls of large dimensions, and which are made 

 of seal-skin, of the intestines of Cetacea, &c. "\¥hen the animal 

 wishes to plunge, it cannot manage it, for these balls buoy it up, 

 and it is obliged to rem.ain near the surface of the water. It 

 advances verj^ gently in this position, so that it cannot escape from 

 the blows of its enemies, who thus slowly^ but surely, kill it. 



"We now arrive at the period when whaling was practised, not 

 by the savage inhabitants of Northern Europe and America, but 

 by civilised peopile. 



It is in a book which dates back as far as the j^ear 875, Miracles 

 de Saint Waast, that we find the first mention made of the syste- 

 matic pursuit of Whales. The people of Biscajr were those who 

 were engaged in it. 



Nearly about the same time, Otherus, a German navigator, 

 visited the coasts of Norway^, to the North Cape, and pushed on 

 as far as the entrance into the ^Vhite Sea. He met in these 

 northern seas quantities of fishermen, and saw more than two 

 hundred Whales taken in two days. 



From the eleventh to the twelfth century^ this branch of in- 

 dustryr took root in Flanders and in Normandy, and the principal 

 whaling ships were fitted up in the jjorts of these countries. The 

 author of a Life of St. Arnould, Bidiop of Soissons, describes the 

 form of the harpoons, the wayr in which they were used, and 

 enimierates the tithes paid hj the whalers to the ecclesiastics of 

 that canton. In the twelfth centurj^, the Norwegian sailors 

 carried on the pursuit of AVhales with great activity^. 



In the fourteenth century^, the sailors of Biscay began to under- 

 take regular expeditions to the northern seas ; their ships were 

 fitted out in the different harbours along our (French) sea-shore. 

 Their expeditions were always cro-mied with success, for they 

 came back each year with a fidl cargo. It was then that the 



