Yet By The Exertions Of An Admirable Dexterity, Improved By
A Long Practice, In Which These People Are Become Superior
To any
other whale-men; by knowing the temper of the whale after her first
movement, and by many other
Useful observations; they seldom failed
to harpoon it, and to bring the huge leviathan on the shores. Thus
they went on until the profits they made, enabled them to purchase
larger vessels, and to pursue them farther, when the whales quitted
their coasts; those who failed in their enterprises, returned to the
cod-fisheries, which had been their first school, and their first
resource; they even began to visit the banks of Cape Breton, the
isle of Sable, and all the other fishing places, with which this
coast of America abounds. By degrees they went a-whaling to
Newfoundland, to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, to the Straits of
Belleisle, the coast of Labrador, Davis's Straits, even to Cape
Desolation, in 70 degrees of latitude; where the Danes carry on some
fisheries in spite of the perpetual severities of the inhospitable
climate. In process of time they visited the western islands, the
latitude of 34 degrees famous for that fish, the Brazils, the coast
of Guinea. Would you believe that they have already gone to the
Falkland Islands, and that I have heard several of them talk of
going to the South Sea! Their confidence is so great, and their
knowledge of this branch of business so superior to that of any
other people, that they have acquired a monopoly of this commodity.
Such were their feeble beginnings, such the infancy and the progress
of their maritime schemes; such is now the degree of boldness and
activity to which they are arrived in their manhood.
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