ORDER OF CETACEA. 
45 
classic process of hunting was established and regulated, of which 
we shall soon have to treat. 
From the year 1372 whalers from Biscay arrived at the great 
bank of Newfoundland, whence they pushed on as far as the Gulf of 
St. Lawrence and the coasts of Labrador. In the fourteenth century, 
whaling vessels were fitted out at Bordeaux for the Arctic Seas, 
which went up as far as Greenland, and even to Spitzbergen. 
The success of the people of Biscay excited the jealousy and the 
cupidity of other nations. As they were not protected by the 
national flag, they were interfered with, and were at last excluded 
from the whaling- grounds, either by force or by heavy contributions 
being levied on them; and so, from the commencement of the 
seventeenth century, their trade began to decline. It was defini- 
tively lost for them and for France, when, in 1636, the Spaniards 
seized upon fourteen large ships manned by Biscayans, which had 
just returned from Greenland, with rich cargoes of blubber and 
whalebone. 
The Biscayan whalers now decided to play only a secondary part. 
They found themselves reduced to act as guides to their powerful 
rivals ; they taught the art of whaling to the Dutch, and even to 
the English. With the Dutch the pursuit and capture of Whales 
became rapidly of very great importance. Supported by rich 
companies, this new field of enterprise became a source of great 
prosperity for Holland, until the beginning of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. But at this period it was paralysed by the maritime war ; 
and after the peace it was never again started on the same scale. 
Whilst the whaling was giving to the Dutch such splendid 
results, it did not prosper in the hands of English outfitters and 
sailors. But this persevering and active nation redoubled its 
efforts, so as to ensure success. In 1732 England granted rich 
prizes to all whaling ships, and even went so far as to double those 
prizes in 1749. From that time forwards this branch of maritime 
industry increased rapidly in England. 
Pursued in their natural latitudes by a merciless war, the 
Whales gradually took their departure, going more and still 
farther north. Till towards the fifteenth century, the whaling 
went on along the French coasts of the ocean, that is to say, in the 
Gulf of Gascony.* It was, as we have said, the privilege of the 
* There is no reason to suppose that the Greenland Right Whale ever inhabited 
