186 MABINE MAMMALS OF THE NORTH-WESTERN COAST. 



Deduction of the Origin of Commerce), or, as Hakluyt thinks, about 890, ' Our 

 excellent King Alfred' received from one Octher [Ohthere?], a Norwegian, an 

 account of his discoveries northward on the coast of Norway ; a coast which seems 

 to have been before very little, if at all, known to the Anglo-Saxons. There is 

 one very remarkable thing in this account; for he tells King Alfred 'that he sailed 

 along the Norway coast, so far north as commonly the whale -hunters used to 

 travel;' which shows the great antiquity of whale - fishing ; though undoubtedly 

 then and long after, the use of what is usually called whalebone was not known ; 

 so that they fished for whales merely on account of their fat or oil. Octher, after 

 giving a very curious description of the country inhabited by the Finmans, proceeds 

 to say, 'he visited this country also with a view of catching horse -whales, which 

 had bones of very great value for their teeth, of which he brought some to the 

 king ; that their skins were good for making ropes for ships. These whales are 

 much less than other whales, being only five ells long. The best whales were 

 caught in his own country, of which some were forty -eight, some fifty yards long. 

 He said that he was one of six who had killed sixty in two days.'"* 



"These horse -whales, spoken of by Octher, were what we call sea-horses, 

 and the Dutch, sea - cows, or morses. It is probable that the length of the 

 whales caught in his own country is greatly exaggerated. Bealo quotes from many 

 of the ancient writers instances of extraordinary exaggerations of this kind, and 

 doubts whether any whales were ever seen of a greater length than eighty or ninety 

 feet, even admitting they were once found of larger growth than any now seen or 

 captured. The earliest authentic data that I have been able to find respecting the 

 origin of the whale-fishery, as a regular and permanent branch of trade, is that 

 furnished by M'CuUoch in his Commercial Dictionary; which, although little more 

 than a condensation from the works of Anderson, Macpherson, and others, is of a 

 more reliable character than any similar compilation I have met with. At the time 



* This -would seem incredible ; but wlien we Dairies Barrington, in the account of Ohthere's 



investigate the statement, it is found that Ohthere voyage, j>ublished in his Miscellanies, translates 



was a Flemish writer. Hence, instead of reckon- the passage, containing his exploit in the whale- 



ing ells at three feet, we put them down at twen" fishery, in the words, 'he had killed some sis; 



ty-seven inches, which would make the largest and sixty in two days.' But, conscious of the 



whale one hundred and twelve feet long. As unintelligibleness of the sentence, he observes, 



to the killing of sixty whales in two days, by in a note, that syxa, he conceives, should be a 



six men, as stated by Ohthere, Scoresby {Arctic second time repeated here, instead of sijxtig, or 



Regions, Vol. II, page 9) gives a very plain ac- sixty; it would then only be asserted that sis 



count, in a note, of how this assertion might be had been taken in two days, which is much more 



truthful; which is as follows: "The Honorable probable than sixty." 



