36 



ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



66 Enormous o'er the flood, Leviathan 

 Looked forth, and from his roaring nostrils sent 

 Two fountains to the sky, then plunged amain 

 In headlong pastime through the closing gulf." 



Headlong pastime truly ! for down into the ocean's 

 abysses, four hundred fathoms and more can the 

 gigantic monster plunge when seeking for his food, 

 or flying from his pursuers. 



The Greenland whale {Balcena mysticetus) is, or 

 rather was, the grand feature of these seas, and the 

 great temptation to adventurous voyagers. This 

 mighty beast of ocean, whose bulky body reaches a 

 length of sixty feet, has been the source of much 

 wealth, and the theme of many fables. All his 

 bigness was not sufficient to content the lovers of 

 the marvellous, and his dusky skin had needs have 

 been made of India rubber, to have borne the 

 stretching endured by it in the writings of some 

 of its wondering describers. But the whale has 

 his diminishers as well as his magnifiers, and all 

 his bigness cannot save him from destruction. In 

 the year 1814 the whale-fishers killed no fewer than 

 fourteen hundred and thirty-seven whales, and one 

 lucky skipper had the marvellous fortune to bag 

 forty-four whales for his own share in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Spitsbergen. But whale's blubber can- 

 not put up with incessant persecution any more 

 than human flesh, and the golden mine of the Spitz- 

 bergen seas has been exhausted. Well on to two 

 centuries and a half have passed away since the 



