Introduction of Whalebone. 
93 
longer than the rest, underneath like a horn, like the teeth of bores, 
or elephants. This kind of whale hath a fit mouth to eat: and his 
eyes are so large, that 15 men may sit in the room of each of them. 
His horns are 6 or 7 foot long, and he hath 250 upon each eye, as 
hard as horn, that he can stir stiff or gentle, either before, or behind. 
These grow together, to defend his eyes in tempestuous weather, or 
when any other beast that is his enemy sets upon him; nor is it 
a wonder, that he hath so many horns though they be very troublesome 
to him; when as between his eyes, the space of his forehead is 15 or 
20 foot.” (Page 226.) 
Du Bartas is scarcely less absurd :— 
“ Our fear-less saylers, in far voyages 
(More led by gain’s hope than their compasses) 
On th’ Indian shore, have somtime noted som 
Whose bodies covered two broad acres room: 
And in the South-seas they have also seen 
Some like high-topped and huge armed treen;* 
And other-som whose monstrous backs did bear 
Two mighty wheels with whirling spokes, that were 
Much like the winged and wide spreading sayles 
Of any winde-mill turn’d with merry gales.” 
(Divine Weehes, p. 40.) 
The whale fishery, so important a branch of maritime 
industry and adventure, had its rise in the time of 
Elizabeth. Hakluyt, 1575, reports the request of an 
honest merchant, by letter to a friend of his, to be advised 
and directed in the course of killing the whale. The oil 
was the only produce for which the whale was at first 
valued. Anderson, in his Origin of Commerce , 1801, 
traces the introduction of whalebone into England to an 
accident. Some English ships were sent, in 1593, to Cape 
Breton on a whaling expedition. At the entrance of the 
Bay of Saint Lawrence the sailors found no whales, but 
came to a store of 800 whale fins which had been left on 
an island by some Biscay ship, that was afterwards 
wrecked. Deeming the fins of some value, the sailors 
brought them home, and we have soon after this date the 
