At the close Champlain remarks as follows:

"To take up again the thread of my discourse, after the wounding of the whale, as aforesaid, we took numbers of porpoises which our boatswain's mate harpooned, from which we received pleasure and satisfaction."1

From the fact that the whales mentioned by Champlain remained on the surface when killed it is evident that they were Right whales, and not Finbacks, or Humpbacks, as indeed we know from other sources.

The branch of the Franciscan monks of the Roman Catholic church known as the Recollets had mission establishments on the St. Lawrence from 1615 to 1629. Sagard-Theodat, a monk of this order, published in 1632 an account of his observations in the country, in the course of which he makes some very interesting observations on the whales of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which are among the earliest sufficiently detailed to indicate the kind of whale referred to. He writes:

[1615-1629. SAGARD-THEODAT'S NARRATIVE.]

"I amused myself at times, when I felt so disposed, by watching the whales spout and the little whales play, and have seen an infinity of them, particularly at Gaspé, where they disturbed our repose by their puffing, and the divers cruisings of both Gibars and whales. The Gibar is a kind of whale, so called on account of a protuberance that it seems to have, having the back much raised, where it carries a fin.

"It is not smaller than the whales, but is not so thick or corpulent, and has the snout longer and more pointed, and a blowhole on the forehead, through which it spouts water with great force. Some on this account call it the puffer.

"All the whales carry and produce their young fully alive, nursing them, and covering and shielding them with their fins. The Gibars and other whales sleep holding their heads extended a little out of the water, so that this blowhole is exposed and at the surface. The whales are to be seen and discovered from afar by their tail, which they show frequently on diving into the sea, and also by the water which they throw out of their blowholes, which is more than a hogshead at a time, and to the height of two lances, and by this water which the whale throws up, one can judge how much oil it will furnish.

"There are such as one may obtain more than 400 hogsheads (barriques) from, and others less, and, from the tongue one may ordinarily obtain five or six hogs. heads (and Pliny states that whales are found which are 600 feet long and 360 broad). There are some from which one may obtain more.

"On my return I saw very few whales at Gaspé, in comparison with the preceding year, and could not perceive the cause, nor the reason for it, if not that it might be in part the great abundance of blood which flowed from the wound of a large whale, that for pleasure one of our commissioners had given him with a shot of an arquebus, double loaded. This is, however, not the way to capture them, for it requires quite other inventions, and artifices of which the Basques know very well how to make use, but since other authors have written of them, I will refrain from describing them.

'LAVERDIERE, Euvres de Champlain, 2d ed., 3, 1870, pp. 376-377.

"The first whale that we saw at sea was asleep, and as we passed quite close the ship was turned a little, for fear that upon awaking it might do us some harm. I saw one among the others extraordinarily large, and such that the captain and those who went about there said assuredly they had never seen a larger one. That which enabled one the better to appreciate his bulk and size was that in throwing himself about and bearing up against the sea, he made visible a part of his huge body. I was very much astonished by a Gibar which with its fin or its tail (for I could not well discern or recognize which it was) struck so terribly hard on the water, that one could hear it for a long distance, and I was told that it was to surprise and mass together the fish, in order afterwards to swallow them." 1

He remarks also:

"All this bay [of Gaspé] was so full of whales that at last they inconvenienced us very much, and disturbed our repose by their continual bustle, and the noise of their spoutings."

2

We have already seen that Baffin in his letter to Wolstenholme relative to his voyage of 1616 mentions the "Grand Bay" whale (or whale of the Strait of Belle Isle) which Eschricht believed to be Balana mysticetus. (See p. 10.)

Champlain's account of Canada, already cited, which was published in 1632, contains this note:

"Codfish and whales are fished for along all the coasts of New France, in almost all seasons."

NEW ENGLAND COAST.

None of the explorers of the 16th century make any reference, so far as I am aware, to the occurrence of whalebone whales in New England waters. In Brereton's account of Gosnold's voyage to Massachusetts in 1602, however, we find whales included in the list of "commodities" seen in the country, and the following remark:

"On the north side of this island [Martha's Vineyard? March, 1602] we found many huge bones and ribs of whales."

Waymouth, who made a voyage to the coast of New England in 1605, remarks of the Indians:

"One especial thing is their manner of killing the whale, which they call powdawe; and will describe his form; how he bloweth up the water; and that he is twelve fathoms long; and that they go in company of their king with a multi'SAGARD-THEODAT, G., Le Grand Voyage au Pays des Hurons, 1632, pp. 24-27.

4

* Brereton, JoHN, A Brief and True Relation of the Discovery of the North Part of Virginia,

Made this Present Year 1602. London, 1602. Mass. Hist. Coll. (3), 8, p. 87.

tude of their boats, and strike him with a bone made in fashion of a harping iron fastened to a rope, which they make great and strong of the bark of trees, which they veer out after him: then all their boats come about him, and as he riseth above water, with their arrows they shoot him to death: when they have killed him and dragged him to shore, they call all their chief lords together, and sing a song of joy and those chief lords, whom they call sagamores, divide the spoil, and give to every man a share, which pieces so distributed, they hang up about their houses for provision: and when they boil them, they blow off the fat, and put to their pease, maize, and other pulse which they eat."i

His landfall seems to have been at Nantucket [Cuerno?] and he remarks:

"Here [May 14, 1605] we found great store of excellent codfish, and saw many whales, as we had done two or three days before." [Somewhere near the Island of Cuerno in lat. 41° 20'.]*

He also includes whales among the profitable things to be found in New England.3

These notes furnish no information as to the kind of whales obtained, but in John Smith's account of his voyage to New England in 1614 we find a definite allusion to the Finbacks. He writes:

[1614. JOHN SMITH'S VOYAGE TO NEW ENGLAND.]

"In the month of April, 1614, at the charge of Captain Marmaduke Roydon, Captain George Langam, Mr. John Buley and Mr. William Skelton, with two ships from London, I chanced to arrive at Monahigan [Monhegan] an isle of America, in 434 [43° 40'] of northerly latitude: our plot was there to take whales, for which we had one Samuel Cramton and divers others expert in that faculty, and also to make trials of a mine of gold and copper; if those failed, fish and furs were then our refuge to make ourselves savers howsoever: we found this whale-fishing a costly conclusion, we saw many and spent much time in chasing them, but could not kill any, they being a kind of imbartes, and not the whale that yields fins and oil, as we expected; for our gold it was rather the master's device to get a voyage that projected it, than any knowledge he had at all of any such matter; fish and furs were now our guard, and by our late arrival and long lingering about the whale, the prime of both those seasons were past ere we perceived it, we thinking that their seasons served at all times, but we found it otherwise, for by the midst of June the fishing failed, yet in July and August some were taken, but not suf ficient to defray so great a charge as our stay required: of dry fish we made about forty thousand, of cor-fish about seven thousand."4

'Waymouth's Voyage in the Discovery of the Land of Virginia, written by James Rosier. London, 1605. Mass. Hist. Coll. (3), 8, p. 156.

4

SMITH, J., General History of New England. Pinkerton's Voyages, 13, 1812, p. 207. Starbuck puts the matter in a somewhat different light, remarking that Smith "found whales so plentiful along the coast that he turned from the primary object of his voyage to pursue them." There appears to be nothing in the original narrative just quoted to justify this view.-STARBUCK, History of the American Whale Fishery. Rept. U. S. Fish Com., pt. 4, 1878, p. 5, foot-note.

In Bradford's and Winslow's Journal of events in Plymouth Colony from 1602 to 1625 we find the following under date of November 11, 1620:

[1620. CAPE COD. BRADFORD'S AND WINSLOW'S "JOURNAL."]

[Nov. 11, 1620.] "And every day we saw whales playing hard by us; of which in that place, if we had instruments and means to take them, we might have made a very rich return; which, to our great grief, we wanted. Our master and his mate, and others experienced in fishing, professed we might have made three or four thousand pounds' worth of oil. They preferred it before Greenland whalefishing, and purpose the next winter to fish for whale here."

In the same Journal, among the arguments brought forward for the establishment of a settlement at Pamet River, on Cape Cod, is the following:

[1620. CAPE COD, MASS.

BRADFORD'S AND WINSLOW'S "JOURNAL."]

Thirdly, Cape Cod was like to be a place of good fishing; for we saw daily great whales, of the best kind for oil and bone, come close aboard our ship, and, in fair weather, swim and play about us. There was once one, when the sun shone warm, came and lay above water, as if she had been dead, for a good while together, within half a musket shot of the ship; at which two were prepared to shoot, to see whether she would stir or no. He that gave fire first, his musket flew in pieces, both stock and barrel; yet, thanks be to God, neither he nor any man else was hurt with it, though many were there about. But when the whale saw her time, she gave a snuff, and away."

An account of a voyage to New England in 1629 contains the following reference to whales:

This day [June 24] we had all a cleare and comfortable sight of America, and of the Cape Sable that was over against us 7 or 8 leagues northward. Here we saw yellow gilliflowers on the sea.

66

Thursday [25th June] wind still N. E. a full and fresh gale. In the afternoon we had a cleare sight of many islands and hills by the sea shoare. Now we saw abundance of mackrill, a great store of great whales puffing up water as they goe,

1

YOUNG, ALEX., Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers of the Colony of Plymouth from 1602 to 1625, Boston, 1841, p. 119. Bradford's and Winslow's Journal. Young comments on this paragraph as follows:

"Whales are frequently seen in Barnstable Bay and on the outside of the Cape, and are killed by boats from Provincetown. Occasionally, though more rarely of late, they come into the harbour; at the beginning of the present century, two or three whales, producing about a hundred barrels of oil, were annually caught; the last that was killed in the harbour was in Dec., 1840, a humpback, that made fifty barrels of oil. The appearance of a whale in the harbour is the signal for a general stir among the hundred graceful five-hand boats that line the circling shore of this beautiful bay. The American whale fishery commenced at Cape Cod, where it was carried on entirely in boats, which put off whenever a signal was given by persons on the look out from an elevated station, that a whale was seen to blow. In 1690 'one Ichabod Paddock' went from the Cape to Nantucket to teach the inhabitants of that isle the art and mystery of catching whales.-See Mass. Hist. Coll. (1), 111, 157."

'Op. cit., p. 146.

some of them came neere our shipp; this creature did astonish us that saw them not before; their back appeared like a little island.”—(P. 42.) 1

On another page are again mentioned "huge whales going by companies and puffing up water-streames."

3

Richard Mather, in his voyage to New England in 1635, mentions seeing near that coast "mighty whales spewing up water in the air like the smoke of a chimney." In 1639, according to Starbuck, the Massachusetts colonies began to pass acts relating to the fisheries. The earliest paper relating to whales which he quotes is a proposition of the general court of Plymouth Colony respecting "drift fish," dated October 1, 1661. Neither this nor the later documents give any clue to the kind of whales pursued, beyond passing references to whalebone and statements of the amount of oil obtained, but it is probable, judging from evidence of later date, that it was the Atlantic Right whale, Balaena glacialis.

NEW YORK BAY.

The only early historian of New York whose writings, so far as I have been able to ascertain, contain references to whales, is Adriaen Van der Douck. He came to New York about 1645, and about 1653 published the first edition of his Description of the New Netherlands. In this history he turns aside to mention the appearance of two whales in the Hudson River in 1647, and of four others which occurred there the same year, as follows:

[1656. VAN DER DONCK'S DESCRIPTION OF THE NEW NETHERLANDS."]

"I cannot refrain, although somewhat out of place, to relate a very singular occurrence, which happened in the month of March, 1647, at the time of a great freshet caused by the fresh water flowing down from above, by which the water of the [Hudson] river became nearly fresh to the bay, when at ordinary seasons the salt water flows up from twenty to twenty-four miles from the sea. At this season,

two whales, of common size, swam up the river forty miles, from which place one of them returned and stranded about twelve miles from the sea, near which place four others also stranded the same year. The other run farther up the river and grounded near the great Chahoos falls, about forty-three miles from the sea. This fish was tolerably fat, for although the citizens of Rensselaerwyck broiled out a great quantity of train oil, still the whole river (the current being still rapid) was oily for three weeks and covered with grease. As the fish lay rotting, the air was infected with its stench to such a degree that the smell was offensive and perceptible for two miles to leeward. For what purpose those whales ascended the river so far, it being at the time full forty miles from all salt or brackish water, it is dif ficult to say, unless their great desire for fish, which were plenty at this season, led them onward." 5

'A True Relation of the Last Voyage to New England, begun the 25th of April, 1629, written from New England, July 24, 1629. Hutchinson's Coll. Orig. Papers on Hist. Mass. Bay, 1769.

' VAN DER DONCK, A., A Description of the New Netherlands, 2d ed., 1656. 2 N. Y. Hist. Coll., 1, pp. 142–143. The first edition, according to the editor, was published about 1653.