The northern whale-fishery

THE NORTHERN WHALE-FISHERY.
CAPTAIN SCORESBY, F.R.S.E.
LONDON: THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY:
Instituted 1799.
The following pages are an abridgment, with some modifications and additions, of the second volume of captain (now the rev. Dr.) Scoresby’s work on the Arctic Regions and Whale-fishery, Edinburgh, 1820; the substance of the former volume having already appeared in this Monthly Series. The second chapter of the work, on the comparative view of the whale-fisheries of different European nations, has been entirely omitted, as less interesting, it is supposed, to the general reader, than the other chapters.
THE NORTHERN WHALE-FISHERY.
CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE NORTHERN WHALE FISHERIES.
In the early ages of the world, when beasts of prey began to multiply and annoy the vocations of man, the personal dangers to which he must have been occasionally exposed would oblige him to contrive some means of defence. For this end, he would naturally be induced, both to prepare weapons, and also to preconceive plans for resisting the disturbers of his peace. His subsequent rencounters with beasts of prey would, therefore, be more frequently successful, not only in effectually repelling them when they should attack him, but also, in some instances, in accomplishing their destruction. Hence, we can readily and satisfactorily trace to the principles of necessity the adroitness and courage evidenced by the unenlightened nations of the world, in their successful attacks on the most formidable of the brute creation; and hence we can conceive that necessity may impel the indolent to activity, and the coward to actions which would not disgrace the brave. For man to attempt to subdue an animal whose powers and ferocity he regarded with superstitious dread, and the motion of which he conceived would produce a vortex sufficient to swallow up his boat, or any other vessel in which he might approach it—an animal of at least six hundred times his own bulk, a stroke of the tail of which might hurl his boat into the air, or dash it and himself to pieces—an animal inhabiting at the same time an element in which he himself could not subsist; for man to attempt to subdue such an animal, under such circumstances, seems one of the most hazardous enterprizes of which the intercourse with the irrational world could possibly admit. And yet this animal is successfully attacked, and seldom escapes when once he comes within reach of the darts of his assailer.