this "royal fish"--as the ancient
chroniclers call him in contented ignorance of the fact that he is not a
fish at all--had not, indeed, originated in New England, but had been
practised by all maritime peoples of whom history has knowledge, while the
researches of archeologists have shown that prehistoric peoples were
accustomed to chase the gigantic cetacean for his blubber, his oil, and
his bone. The American Indians, in their frail canoes, the Esquimaux, in
their crank kayaks, braved the fury of this aquatic monster, whose size
was to that of one of his enemies as the bulk of a battle-ship is to that
of a pigmy torpedo launch. But the whale fishery in vessels fitted for
cruises of moderate length had its origin in Europe, where the Basques
during the Middle Ages fairly drove the animals from the Bay of Biscay,
which had long swarmed with them. Not a prolific breeder, the whales soon
showed the effect of Europe's eagerness for oil, whalebone and ambergris,
and by the beginning of the sixteenth century the industry was on the
verge of extinction. Then began that search for a sea passage to India
north of the continents of Europe and America, which I have described in
another chapter. The passage was not discovered, but in the icy waters
great schools of right whales were found, and the chase of the "royal
fish" took on new vigor. Of course there was effort on the part of one
nation to acquire by violence a monopoly of this profitable business, and
the Dutch, who have done much in the cause of liberty, defeated the
British in a naval battle at the edge of the ice before the principle of
the freedom of the fisheries was accepted. To-day science has discovered
substitutes for almost all of worth that the whales once supplied, and the
substitutes are in the main marked improvements on the original. But in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the clear whale oil for
illuminating purposes, the tough and supple whalebone, the spermaceti
which filled the great case in the sperm-whale's head, the precious
ambergris--prized even among the early Hebrews, and chronicled in the
Scriptures as a thing of great price--were prizes, in pursuit of which men
braved every terror of the deep, threaded the ice-floes of the Arctic,
fought against the currents about Cape Horn, and steered to every corner
of the Seven Seas the small, stout brigs and barks of New England make.

The whale came to the New Englander long before the New Englander