284 NATURAL HISTORY of NORWAT. 



there has not died afhore, above ten grown men; the reft have 

 been drowned, being moftly fifhermen, and pilots, who are 

 obliged to venture out in the greater!; ftorms, when they hear a 

 fignal of diftrefs from a fhip. In feveral of the out-iflands that 

 are at fome diftance from the coaft, and chiefly inhabited by 

 pilots, the cafe is much the fame ; efpecially at Lindefnses, in the 

 diocefe of Chriftianfand *. They fay, that moft of the women 

 there, have had five or fix hufbands, one after another, and 

 people of credit have amired me that it is true. They fay it is 

 occafioned by the great number of mips of all nations (fometimes 

 feveral hundreds in a day) that go up the Baltick, which by en- 

 deavouring to avoid the dangerous rocks Jydfke Rev, muft pafs 

 by Lindefhaes, fo that by attempting to fave thefe fhips, many a 

 Norwegian pilot has loft his life, and left a widow behind him. 

 In Nordland and Sundmoer, where the greateft fifheries are, fuch 

 as are perhaps not to be equalled in the world, moft of the inha- 

 bitants get their living from the fea, and every year a great many 

 lofe their lives there. This often happens by their own rafhnefs 

 and premmption ; for they make a point of honour of outfailing 

 one another, and every one ftrives to be the firft that hoifts fail. 

 D. Steinkuhl, in his Topographia Norvegicas, p. 121, fpeaking of 

 this infatuation, exprefTes himfelf thus, " Many plunge them- 

 felves wilfully into misfortunes, by their rafhnefs and prefump- 

 tion, as well in boats as in fhips, by being fo bold and daring ; 

 for they look upon it as a difgrace to lower their- fails, in the 

 hardeft gale of wind ; and when they are going through a nar- 

 row channel, they will not give way, but run foul of, and fome- 

 times fink each other." The Norwegians were good failors, and 

 ufed to the fea in very ancient times : they difcovered the Weft- 

 Indies fome hundred years before the Spaniards, and have left 

 behind them a colony ftill fubfifting, as I have fhown above. If 

 we enquire what expedient they ufed inftead of the compafs, the 

 Norwegian chronicles tell us, that it was a raven which they took 

 with them, and let it fly as the Patriarch Noah did ; by this 



* The reverend Mr. J. Spidberg, who has a great knowledge of his mother coun- 

 try, and its antiquities, obferves, in one of his letters to me, that Lindefnses, which 

 name I rather think is derived from linde-tree, was formerly called Lidas-nefs pro- 

 montorium affiictionum, from the many damages and fhipwrecks which the trading- 

 veffels fufrered there, as the Portugueze, when they firft failed round Africa, called 

 the cape of Good-hope, cabo de los Tormientes, on account of the dangerous trava- 

 dos, or ftorms of wind that they obferved here. 



i means 



