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750 “KERGUELEN’S VOYAGE TO THE NORTH.
I am furprized that M. Anderfon could repeat fuch idle tales, for my part all that T re-
late is credible. During our flay in Iceland we killed a number of thefe birds both
male and female, and | remarked that the down taken from the male, which has many
white feathers, is much more fine and delicate than that of the female.
The quantity of fifh of every fort with which Iceland abounds is aftonifhing: they
are fifhed for all the year about; but the moft fuitable feafon is from March to Sep-
tember. The fifhery produces herrings, cod, haddock, hollebut, foles,. plaice, maids,
mackarel, ray fifh, &c. All thefe fifh are well known, but we caught of them fome
unufually large; a maid one day, for example, which weighed three hundred pounds.
The moft fingular fifh of this ifland is that we call the wolf-fith, which the Icelanders
name /teen bit (ftone-eater) ; when opened it is always found full of little ftones or
gravel: it feeds alfo upon fmall cod, which it is continually purfuing. As often as the
weather will allow, the Icelanders go fifhing in the bays, or even as far as a league or
two to fea; they embark for the purpofe in {mall boats, which are called by them yazw/s.
The moft common and moft advantageous fifh for the inhabitants is the cod, which
they know by the name of for/ch; it is their principal article of barter; they maintain
themfelves by exchanging it againft whatever they have occafion for. It is this fith that
the French and Dutch go to fifh for in the months from March to September. The
veflels they ufe are called doggers, and are of about an hundred tons burthen. The
fifhery begins at the head-land of Bederwick, and ends at the point of Langenefs, going
round by the North cape and the ifland of Grims. The people fifth with the hook,
which is furnifhed with a bit of raw meat, or the heart of a fifh newly taken. The
French and Dutch doggers ufually fifh at the diftance of five or fix leagues from fhore,
in forty to fifty fathoms water. Many veflels even go fifteen leagues to fea, and fith in
one hundred fathoms water. When the cod is taken the head is cut off; it is well
wafhed and cured, and afterwards put in cafks with rock or Lifbon falt. hus is this
fifhery carried on, which employs annually about eighty French and two hundred Dutch
fhips. ‘Cod fifh thus prepared is white and delicate, rock falt contributing to preferve
its whitenefs, not precipitating a dirty fediment, like French falt. It is furprifing, om
noticing the great quantity of cod that is annually taken on the great bank, in the north,
&c. that the fea fhould not be exhaufted ; but a naturalift, who had the patience to
enumerate the eggs of a.cod, and who found in one only 9,344,000 eggs, has fufficiently
fatisfied us that its increafe muft exceed its deftruction. After the cod, the moft common
fith is the herring, along the coafts, and throughout the north fea, the fifhery of which
is infinitely produétive to ti yhyperborean nations. ‘This fifh is fo numerous, thatit is
calculated that the whole ten by the fifhermen of the north, bears proportion to the
number which populate the fea as one to a million only. This fifhery fupports more
than one hundred thoufand people in Holland. M. Huet values the annual produce of
the Dutch fifhery at twenty-five millions, of which feventeen millions are gain, and the
expences eight. Doot affirms that in 1688 the number of four hundred and fifty thou-
fand Dutchmen were employed in the herring-fifhery and its concerns.
A great number of whales are met with, particularly in the fummer, on the coaft of
Iceland. I have feen twelve or fifteen together, five or fix leagues from fhore, north
of Bird’s ifland ; I fired about twenty cannon-fhot at them to exercife my gunners, and
wounded feveral. -In Iceland they catch a quantity of falmon; and in the lakes, fuch as
the myvarne, of which I have before fpoken, numbers of excellent trout are met with,
which the inhabitants dry and falt. Eels as well are very common ; but the Icelanders
have a particular antipathy to them.
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