R. BROWN ON THE CETACEA OE GREENLAND. 81
ships arrive generally too late, and the weather at that season istoo tempestuous to render the “ South - west Fishing ” veryattractive. Later in the year the ships enter Cumberland Sound in great numbers; and many of them (especially American andPeterhead vessels) now make a regular practice of wintering therein order to attack the Whales in early spring. It is said thatearly in September they enter Cumberland (Hogarth’s) Sound ingreat numbers and remain until it is completely frozen up, which,according to Eskimo account, is not until the month of January.It is also affirmed by the natives that when they undertake longjourneys over the ice in spring, when hunting for young Seals ,they see Whales in great numbers at the edge of the ice-floe.They enter the Sound again in the spring and remain until theheat of summer has entirely melted off the land-floes in thesecomparatively southern latitudes. It thus appears that they winter(and produce their young) all along the broken water off thecoast of the southern portions of Davis Strait , Hudson’s Strait ,and Labrador. The ice remaining longer on the western than onthe eastern shore of Davis Strait , and thus impeding their northernprogress, they cross to the Greenland coast; but, as at that seasonthere is little land-ice south of 65°, they are rarely found south ofthat latitude. They then remain here until the land-floes havebroken up, when they cross to the western shores of the Strait ,where we find them in July. I am strongly of belief that theWhales of the Spitzbergen sea never, as a body, visit Davis Strait ,but winter somewhere in the open water at the southern edge ofthe northern ice-fields. The Whales are being gradually drivenfurther north, and are now rarely found, even by their traces,* sofar south as the Island of Jan Mayen (71° N. lat.), round whichthey were so numerous in the palmy days of the llutcli whalingtrade. I am not quite sure, after all that has been said on thissubject, that the Whale is getting extinct, and am beginning toentertain convictions that its supposed scarcity in recent times isa great deal owing to its escaping to remote, less known, and lessvisited localities. It is said to be coming back again to the coastof Greenland , now that the hot pursuit of it has slackened in thatportion of Davis Strait . The varying success of the trade isowing not so much to the want of Whales as to the ill luck of thevessels in coming across their haunts. Every now and againcargoes equal to anything that was obtained in the best days ofthe trade are obtained. Fourteen years ago I came home toEngland “ shipmates ” (as the phrase goes) with no less thanthirty Right Whales, in addition to a miscellaneous menagerie of
Arctic animals dead and alive, and a motley human crew_a
company so outre that I question if ever naturalist, or even whaler,sailed with the like before.