When Nearchus Sailed With The Fleet Of Alexander The Great From The Indus To The Red Sea, A Whale Also

Caused so great a panic that it was only with difficulty that the commander could restore order among the frightened

Seamen, and get the rowers to row to the place where the Whale spouted water and caused a commotion in the sea like that of a whirlwind. All the men shouted, struck the water with their oars, and sounded their trumpets, so that the large, and, in the judgment of the Macedonian Heroes, terrible animal, was frightened. _(See the "Indica" of Nearchus, preserved to us by Arrian, an excellent translation of which, by J. W. McCrindle, appeared in 1879.)_ Quite otherwise was the Whale regarded on Spitsbergen some few years after Burrough's voyage. At the sight of a Whale all men were beside themselves with joy, and rushed down into the boats in order to attack and kill the valuable, animal. The fishery was carried on with such success, that the right Whale _(Balaena mysticetus L.)_, whose pursuit then gave full employment to ships by hundreds, and to men by tens of thousands, is now practically extirpated. As this Whale still occurs in no limited numbers in other parts of the Polar Sea, this state of things shows how easily an animal is driven away from a region where it is so much hunted. Captain Svend Foeyn, from 1864 to 1881, exclusively hunted another species (_Balanoptera Sibbaldii_ Gray), on the coast of Finmark; and other species still follow shoals of fish on the Norwegian coast, where they sometimes strand and are killed in considerable numbers. (Nordenskiold's _Voyage of the Vega_, vol. I., p. 165).] And a little after we spied certaine Islands, with which we bare, and found good harbor in 15 or 18 fadome, and blacke oze: we came to an anker at a Northeast sunne, and named the Island S. Iames his Island, [Footnote: Evidently one of the Islands at the south of Novaya Zemlya.] where we found fresh water.

Sunday, (26) much wind blowing we rode still.

Munday (27) I went on shoare and tooke the latitude, which was 70 degrees 42 minutes: the variation of the compasse was 7 degrees and a halfe from the North to the West.

Tuesday (28) we plyed to the Westwards alongst the shoare, the wind being at Northwest, and as I was about to come to anker, we saw a sayle comming about the point, whereunder we thought to haue ankered. [Sidenote: The relation of Loshak.] Then I sent a skiffe aboord of him, and at their coming aboord they tooke acquaintance of them and the chiefe man said hee had bene in our company in the riuer Cola, and also declared unto them that we were past the way which should bring vs to the Ob. This land, sayd he, is called Noua Zembla, that is to say, the New land: and then he came aboord himselfe with his skiffe, and at his comming aboord he told me the like, and sayd further, that in this Noua Zembla is the highest mountaine in the worlde, as he thought, [Footnote:

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