46 • MAMMALIA. 



Bisca3'ans. But from the sixteentli century, the Whales, having 

 become more timid, took refuge in the seas of Greenland and of 

 Spitzbergen. They were then very numerous near the coasts and 

 creeks or coves. The whalers very quickly got fidl cargoes when 

 they remained near the land. Troops of Whales swam with con- 

 fidence along the coasts and bays in the immediate vicinity of 

 Greenland and Spitzbergen. They did not flee from the ships, 

 and surrendered themselves without offering any defence to the 

 avidity of the whalers. The Dutch had even built, in the island of 

 Amsterdam, the village of Smeerenbourg (village of grease). They 

 here established warehouses and supplies of different sorts of goods. 

 In the wake of their fleets of whaling ships they sent out other 

 vessels, laden with wine, brandy, tobacco, and eatables. In these 

 establishments they melted down the fat of the ^^Tiales they had 

 brought there dead, and then brought the oil to Europe. 



But very soon the Whales became timid and altogether shy. 

 They emigrated gradually and slowly, as if they quitted with 

 regret the coasts and the bays where they were born, where, free 

 and happj', they had lived and multiplied. 



They gained the regions of moving ice, whither the whalers 

 soon pursued them. They then went and hid themselves under 

 the fixed ice ; and, as their principal place of refuge, they chose 

 the immense crust of ice, which the Dutch have named Wed-ys 

 (the western ice). The whalers invaded this motionless ice. 

 Pushing their boats on to the very edge of it, they looked out for 

 the moment when the Whales were forced to quit this protecting 

 vault, to come and breathe above the water. 



Thus it was that the whalers were obliged to abandon the 

 waters of Sfjitzbergen, to go towards the great bank of ice which 

 boimds, on the north-west, the Sea of Greenland. 



It is principally in these latitudes, that is to say, towards 78° or 

 81^ north latitude, or in Davis's Straits, near the Isle of Disco, 

 that whaling has been pursued with the greatest activity since 

 the middle of the seventeenth century. But these last-named seas 

 have been deserted in their turn, so that the English whalers are 

 obliged now to pass over the ice in Bafiln's Baj-, as far as the 



the northern temperate zone, at least tmdcr present conditions of temperature. 

 Rorquals Tvere formerly much more common in these latitudes; hut a Balcena 

 Biscayensis is stiU believed in hy some naturalists. — Ed. 



