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432 ACCOUNT OF DANISH LAPLAND BY LEEMS.
ufe, adding, as the occafion may require, certain circumftances that fhould be known,
and would caft a light over natural hiftory. About the feftival of the purification of the
Virgin, and therefore about the middle of winter, a great quantity of whales is feen,
not only near the fhores extending far into the fea, but even in the recefles themfelves
of the inner bays, which, as if by the exprefs command of Heaven, drive into thofe
places the larger codfifh, and other fifth in great quantities, where they can be conve-
niently caught by the fifhermen; fo that thefe animals, altogether without the ufe and
cuidance of reafon, are to be confidered as inftruments by which the benign goodnefs of
Him adminifters food to his people, inhabiting a country where they neither fow nor
reap. While thefe whales are ariving the fifh into the bays and on fhoals, they ufually
fet up at the fame time a horrid noife, whilft a vapour-like fmoke rifes up on each fide
of them. The inhabitants ufually call troops or clofe bodies of whales of this kind
Hval Grin. F-xperience has fhewn, it is by no means fafe to approach too hear a troop
of whales driving and hunting the lefler fifth, when fifhing boats have been not unfre-
quently overfet by their being inthe way. Under the canicular heats when whales
meet for the purpofe of procreation, it is alfo equally dangerous to come near them,
who take, as it feems, any fifhing boat fora mate. To avoid this danger, caftor-oil,
which is very hateful and intolerable to the whale kind, is thrown into the fea, and, in
defect of this, benches, empty tubs and fuch things as are at hand and the occafion fup-
plies, with which, while the whale is playing, the fifhermen expofed to the danger make
good ufe of the opportunity of getting off. At the time when the whales meet for
the purpofe of procreating, the {perma ceti is found here and there, either floating on
the water, or caft upon the fhore.
Among the whales which are to be met with in the fea about Finmark the following
are the principal: 1ft, The whale, which by the natives is called Ror-Hval; 2d, the
whale, from the very great fize of its body, called Stor-Hval, ‘There are whales of
this kind which drive the fifh into the bays and on the fhoals. 3dly, The whale, Tro/d-.
Hval, a beaft of immenfe bulk covered with fcales. This montter is faid to raife a
horrid noife from the waters; to him is affigned at the fame time a difpofition to
overturn the boats of the fifhermen wherever he finds them, and the more to be dreaded
by the failors, as he rifes feldom from the deep where he lies hid. 4thly, The whale
which is commonly called Nord Kaperen, accuftomed to come from the icy mountains
at Cape Nord, the laft promontory, whence its name alfo. Whales of this fpecies are
incredibly ferocious and untamable, very dreadful and dangerous to fifher-men; but
they are fhort in ftature, with a thick and fhort head, whence, in the Norwegian lan.
guage, they are called Stubben.
There are various figures of whales that prefent themfelves, to be found among the
writers of natural hiftory ; and in a late defcription of Greenland, engraven on copper
fo neatly and accurately, that it would be fuperfluous altogether to repeat them here.
As foon as large bodies of whales, as jult ftated, at a certain feafon of the year, gather
round the promontory of Cape Nord, ftrangers then frequent for fifhing thefe fhores.
For prefling the oil from the fat of whales they took up their refidence in Kielvigia and
the ifland Sor-Den in Weftern Finmark. In procefs of time the Spaniards alfo from the
province of Bifcay made the experiment of fifhing in thefe countries, differing from
former fifhermen in this refpect, that they ufed to prefs the oil from the fat, not on the
land but in their fhips; whereas the Laplanders formerly, inhabitants of the bay of
Porfanger, applied themfelves to the taking of whales by inftruments of their own in-
vention. It fometimes happens, that whales, either mortally wounded by the Green-
land fifbermen, or killed by marine dogs, are caft on the fhores of Vinmark. ‘The kings
of
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