1,1 
OTHERE’S ARCTIC EXPEDITION. 
49 
noble bones in their teeth^ of which the travellers brought some 
to the king; and their hides are very good for ship-ropes. 
These whales are much less than other whales, not being longer 
than seven ells. But in his own country is the best whale-hunt¬ 
ing. There they are eight-and-forty ells long, and the largest 
are -fifty ells long. Of these he said he and five others had killed 
sixty in tw’o days.^ He was a very wealthy man in those pos¬ 
sessions in which their wealth consists, that is, in wild deer. He 
had at the time he came to the king, six hundred unsold tame 
deer. These deer they call rein-deer, of which there were six 
decoy rein-deer, which are very valuable among the Fins, because 
they catch the wild rein-deer with them. 
'' He was one of the first men in that country, yet he had not 
more than twenty horned cattle, twenty sheep and twenty swine, 
and the little that he ploughed he ploughed with horses. But their 
wealth consists mostly in the rent paid them by the Fins. That 
lent is in skins of animals and birds’ feathers, and whalebone, 
and in ship-ropes made of whales’ ^ hides, and of seals’. Every 
one pa 3 ^s according to his birth ; the best-born, it is said, pay the 
skins of fifteen martens, and five rein-deers, and one bear’s skin, 
ten ambers of feathers, a bear’s or otter’s skin kyrtle, and two ship- 
ropes, each sixty ells long, made either of whale or of seal hide.” 
who ten years before had seen them in herds of hundreds and thousands. 
I have myself seen such herds in Hinloopen Strait in July 1861, but when 
during my journeys in 1868 and 1872-3 1 again visited the same regions, 
I saw there not a single walrus, 
1 As it appears to be impossible for six men to kill sixty great whales 
in two days, this passage has caused tlie editors of Othere’s narrative 
much perplexity, which is not wonderful if great whales, as the Balcana 
7mjsticetus, are here meant. But if the narrative relates to the smaller 
species of the whale, a similar catch may still, at the present day, be made 
on the coasts of the Polar countries. For various small species go together 
in great shoals ; and, as they occasionally come into water so shallow that 
they are left aground at ebb, they can be killed with ease. Sometimes, 
too, a successful attempt is made to drive them into shallow water. That 
whales visit the coast of Norway in spring in large shoals dangerous to 
the navigator is also stated by Jacob Ziegler, in his work, Qucb intus. conti- 
nentur Syria, Palestina, Arabia, AEgyptus, Schondia, &c, Argentorati, 
1532, p. 97. 
2 In this case is meant by “ whale ” evidently the walrus, whose skin is 
still used for lines by the Norwegian walrus-hunters, by the Eskimo, and 
the Chukchis. The skin of the true whale might probably be used for 
thfe same purpose, although, on account of its thickness, perhaps scarcely 
with advantage without the use of special tools for cutting it up. 
E 
