CHAPTER IV.
THE WHALING INDUSTRY--ITS EARLY DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND--KNOWN TO THE ANCIENTS--SHORE WHALING--BEGINNINGS OF THE DEEP-SEA FISHERIES--THE PRIZES OF WHALING--PIETY OF ITS EARLY PROMOTERS--THE RIGHT WHALE AND THE CACHALOT--A FLURRY--SOME FIGHTING WHALES--THE "ESSEX" AND THE "ANN ALEXANDER"-- TYPES OF WHALERS--DECADENCE OF THE INDUSTRY--EFFECT OF OUR NATIONAL WARS--THE EMBARGO--SOME STORIES OF WHALING LIFE.
In the old "New England Primer," on which the growing minds of Yankee infants in the early days of the eighteenth century were regaled, appears a clumsy woodcut of a spouting whale, with these lines of excellent piety but doubtful rhyme: Whales in the sea Their Lord obey.
It is significant of the part which the whale then played in domestic economy that his familiar bulk should be utilized to "point a moral and adorn a tale" in the most elementary of books for the instruction of children.

And indeed by the time the "New England Primer" was published, with its quaint lettering and rude illustrations, the whale fishery had come to be one of the chief occupations of the seafaring men of the North Atlantic States.

The pursuit of 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.