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Show 1881.] THE BASQUE PROVINCES OF SPAIN. 973 sixteenth century. To the left of the inscription there is carved harpooned whale, with the line fastened to a boat, in which are two men. Don Nicolas de Soraluce, the learned historian of Guipuzcoa, told me that an old resident in Zarauz, named Belaunzaran, had often spoken to him of the feat recorded on this stone slab, adding that he used to hear his grandmother explain that the carving represented the harpooning and killing of a whale by two young sailors in a single boat. This deed was considered worthy of being handed down to posterity ; and the stone was therefore placed over the door of the house of these two brothers, or, as some say, a father and son. There are some other records as to the disposition of the whalebone. By an order dated Nov. 20th, 1474, the town of Guetaria gave half the value of each whale towards the repair of the church and of the boat-harbour. In San Sebastian, according to an ancient custom, the whalebone was given to the " Cofradia" (brotherhood) "of San Pedro." It is clear that the whales, close along the coast, became very scarce in the middle of the seventeenth century, when the entries at Lequeitio cease, and that the Basque sailors then began to seek the means of exercising their special craft by making long voyages, even to the Arctic regions. Such voyages were occasionally made at a still earlier period. It is stated by Madoz that a pilot of Zarauz named Matias de Echeveste was the first Spaniard who visited the banks of Newfoundland, and that, according to a memoir written by his son, he made 28 voyages from 1545 to 1599, the year of his death. In the accounts of the first English whaling voyages to Spitzbergen, in the collection of Purchas, we read of Basque ships from San Sebastian frequenting those Arctic seas in search of whales, and of the overbearing way in which their captains were often treated by the English. Nevertheless the English were glad to obtain the help of the Basque sailors to do for them the most perilous and difficult part of the work, namely the harpooning and killing of the whales. I gather from Eschricht and Reinhardt's memoir that this Biscavan whale was known to the French Basques as the " Sarde," and was the same as the " Nordkaper " of the Dutch and North Germans, and the " Sletbag" of Iceland, a whalebone whale, but smaller and more active than the great Greenland Whale. The Konge-speil (an ancient Norwegian record) has a passage to the effect that " those who travel on the sea fear it much ; for its nature is to play much with vessels." Belonging to the temperate North Atlantic, it is described as much more active than the Greenland Whale, much quicker and more violent in its movements, more difficult and dangerous to catch. It is smaller and has less blubber than the B. mysticetus, the head shorter, and the whalebone much thicker but scarcely more than half as long. For centuries the Basques had attacked and captured this formidable Cetacean; and they, in fact, monopolized all the experience and skill which then existed in connexion with the craft and mys- |