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RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE 
But, about the year 1771, we find that the American 
navigators were engaged with extraordinary ardour in the 
whale fisheries which were carried on in the north and 
south Atlantic oceans. From the year 1771 to 1775 
Massachusets alone employed annually 183 vessels, 
carrying 13,820 tons in the former, and 121 vessels 
carrying 14,026 tons in the latter. 
Mr. Burke, in his famous speech on American affairs 
in 1774, adverted to this wonderful display of daring 
enterprise in the following eloquent words: “As to the 
wealth,” said he, “ which the colonists have drawn from 
the sea by their fisheries, you had all that matter fully 
opened at your bar. You surely thought these acquisitions 
of value, for they seemed to excite your envy, and yet the 
spirit by which that enterprising employment has been 
exercised ought rather, in my opinion, to have raised 
your esteem and admiration. And pray, sir, what in 
the world is equal to it? Pass by the other parts, and 
look at the manner in which the New England people 
carry on the whale fishery. While we follow them 
among the trembling mountains of ice, and behold them 
penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson’s 
and Davis’s Straits, while we are looking for them be- 
neath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced 
into the opposite region of polar cold— that they are at 
the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of 
the south. Falkland Island, which seems too remote 
for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and 
resting place for their victorious industry. Nor is the 
equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the 
