NORD CAPPER
BALÆNA AUSTRALIS
Captain T. Robertson of the Scotia in 1911, though he came home with a “clean ship,” saw over forty of the Mysticeti east of Greenland, but could not get near them, for they kept warily far in amongst the ice floes.
The sperm whale is also recovering in numbers. I have seen them in great numbers only last year in warm southern waters, where twenty years ago they had become very scarce.
We must mention here another whale that was actually supposed to be extinct. This is the Biscayensis, commonly called a Nordcapper; it is a small edition of the Greenland Right whale and is practically identical with the Australis of the Southern Seas.
This is the first whale we read of being hunted; in the Bay of Biscay and along the west of Europe it was supposed to have become extinct, but of recent years we have found them in considerable numbers round the coasts of Shetland and Ireland; a few years ago there were, I think, eighty of them captured in the season.
CHAPTER III
It does not surprise me that the Vikings of the olden days used to leave the southern coast of Norway for summer visits to our Highlands and western isles, for the climate in this Southern Norway in August is most relaxing; there is absolutely nothing of that feeling of “atmospheric champagne” that you expect to enjoy in Northern Norway in summer.