Dutch, and English, immediately thereafter commenced the chase for whales in the waters surrounding it.

Scarcely had the colonists of Massachusetts planted themselves at Plymouth, before the sterility of the soil and the rigor of the climate forced them to resort to the sea to eke out their subsistence. Pursuing the whales out from their own bays, in vessels of only forty tons burthen, they appeared on the fishing ground off Newfoundland in the year 1690. Profiting by nearness of position and economy in building and equipping ships, and sharing also in the bounties with which England was then stimulating the whale fishery, they soon excelled all their rivals on the Newfoundland waters, as well as in Baffin's Bay and off the coast of Greenland. Thus encouraged, they ran down the coasts of America and Africa, and in the waters rolling between them they discovered the black whale, a new and inferior species, yet worthy of capture; and then stretching off toward the South Pole, they found still another species, the sperm whale, whose oil is still preferred above all other; and thus they enlarged the whale fishery for the benefit of the world, which since that time has distinguished the two branches of that enterprise geographically by the designation of the Northern and Southern fisheries. In 1775 the fisheries were carried on by the Americans, the English, the Dutch, and the French. The French employed only a small fleet, the Dutch a larger one of 129 sail. The English had only 96 ships, while the Americans had 132 vessels in the Southern fishery, and 177 in the Northern fishery, manned with 4,000 persons, and bringing in oil and whalebone of the value of one million one hundred and eleven thousand dollars. This precociousness of American nautical enterprise elicited from Burke, in his great speech for conciliation to the colonies, a tribute familiar to our countrymen, and perhaps the most glowing passage that even that great orator ever wrote or spake:

"Look at the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on the whale fishery. Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits, whilst we are looking for them beneath the Arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of Polar cold-that they are at the Antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the South. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting place in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor is the Equatorial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the Poles. We know that whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No ocean but what is vexed with their fisheries, no climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this perilous mode of hardy enterprise to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people-a people who are still, as it were, in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood."

But Britain did not conciliate. The Revolution went on, and the American whale fishery perished, leaving not one vessel on either fishing ground.

Yet it is curious, Mr. President, to mark the elasticity of our countrymen in this their favorite enterprise. A provisional treaty of peace between the United States and Great Britain was concluded on the 30th of November, 1782. "On the 3d of February, 1783," (I read

from an English paper of that period,) "the ship Bedford, Captain Moores, belonging to Massachusetts, arrived in the Downs. She passed Gravesend on the 4th, and on the 6th was reported at the custom-house in London. She was not allowed regular entry until after some consultation between the commissioners of customs and the Lords of the Council, on account of the many acts of Parliament yet in force against the rebels of America. She was loaded with 587 barrels of whale oil, and manned wholly with American seamen, and belonged to the island of Nantucket. The vessel lay at the Horsley-Downs, a little below the Tower, and was the first which displayed the thirteen stripes of America in any British port."

Nevertheless, the lost vantage ground was not easily nor speedily regained. The effort was made without protection, against exclusion in foreign markets, and against bounties by the English Government equivalent to forty dollars per man employed, or sixty per cent. on the value of every cargo obtained-bounties not occasionally nor irregularly offered, but continued from 1750 to 1824, and amounting in the aggregate to three millions of pounds sterling. Nor was this all. These bounties, enhanced with additional inducements, were offered to the Nantucket fishermen, on condition of their abandoning their country and becoming inhabitants of the adjacent British Colonies, or of the British Islands. It seemed, indeed, that a crisis in this great national interest had come. Happily there was, on the French side of the Channel, at least, one unwearied friend of America, as there were many watchful enemies of England. Lafayette wrote several letters. to Boston, and arrested an immigration from Nantucket to the British Colonies and Islands already on the eve of embarkation, and then addressed himself to the French monarch and his Court. France saw at once the dangers of a transfer of so great a number of seamen, together with the very secret, art and mystery of whale hunting, to her hereditary and relentless enemy. The good but ill-fated Louis XVI equipped six whaling vessels, with American harpooners, on his own account, and offered a bounty of nine dollars per man, payable by the Royal Treasury, to every American fisherman who should emigrate to France. In a whole year, only nine families, containing thirty-three persons, accepted this offer; and therefore the King, in compliance with Lafayette's first advice, adopted the expedient of discriminating in favor of American cargoes of oil and whalebone in the French market. The American whale fishery began to revive, and in 1787, 1788, and 1789, it employed an average of 122 vessels. But it still labored under the pressure of competition, stimulated by bounties both in England and in France. In 1790, the Great and General Council of Massachusetts appealed to Congress for protection to this great interest of that Commonwealth. Mr. Jefferson, the Secretary of State, submitted an elaborate reply, which, while it was liberal in its spirit, nevertheless closed. with the declaration, that "the whale fishery was a branch of industry so poor as to come to nothing with distant nations who did not support it from their treasuries-that our position placed our fishing on ground somewhat higher, such as to relieve the National Treasury from giving it support, but not to permit it to derive support from the fishery, nor to relieve the Government from the obligation to provide free markets for the productions of the fishery, if possible."

The enterprise had not yet languished into life, when the French Revolution of 1789 occurred, which involved Europe, and ultimately the United States, in wars that swept the latter, as well as the French. and Dutch, from all the fisheries, and left them in the exclusive enjoyment of Britain, who achieved in those wars her now established preeminence as the conqueror of the seas. At their close, the British had 146 vessels in the Northern whaling ground, which captured no less. than 733 whales, and thus obtained 13,590 tons of oil and 438 tons of whalebone; and 56 ships in the Southern whale fishery equally successful. The Americans now re-entered the game, and the tables were speedily and, as we think, permanently-turned in their favor. In 1824 the British became discouraged, and withdrew their bounties; and in 1842 they had no more than 18 vessels in the North fishery, which captured only 24 whales. The Southern fishery declined still more rapidly; so that, in 1845, not one British whaler appeared in the South Seas. Since that time, all nations have virtually abandoned this "hardy form of perilous enterprise" in favor of the Americans. The entire whaling fleet of the world, in 1847, consisted of about 900 vessels, 40 of which belonged to France, 20 to Bremen and other ports in Northern Europe, 20 to New Holland and other British Polynesian Colonies; and all others, more than 800 in number, with a tonnage of 240,000 tons, belonged to the United States. The capital thus employed exceeded twenty millions of dollars, and the annual productions of the fisheries amounted to thirteen millions of dollars. With the de

cline of this enterprise in Great Britain, her commercial writers began to discountenance whale fishing altogether; and while they now represent it as a mere gambling adventure, they endeavor to stimulate the people of Continental Europe to substitute vegetable oils for those procured in the seas.

Mr. President: Pray consider the cost, time, dangers, and hazards of the whale fishery. Each vessel with its outfit is worth $30,000, and carries thirty able-bodied seamen, and is afloat on a single voyage one or two, perhaps three years. It finds the whale nowhere below the sixtieth degree of latitude, and can remain there only during the brief Polar summer of three months. The whole time may elapse without a whale being seen. When discovered, every stage of his capture is toilsome, and attended with multiplied dangers to the assailants, increased by the shoals, the ice, the storms, and the fogs, which protect the animal against his pursuers. The statistics are absolutely frightful to a landsman or a common seaman. In 1819, of sixty-three British ships sent to Davis's Straits, ten were lost. In 1821, out of sixtynine, eleven were lost. Of eighty-seven ships that sailed for Davis's Straits in 1830, no less than eighteen were lost, twenty-four returned clean, while not one of the remainder had a full cargo, and only one or two half fished.

Pray consider now, sir, that the great triumph of the American fishermen was achieved, and is still sustained, not only without aid from the Government, but practically also without aid from the capital or enterprise of general commerce, and, indeed, to quote the nervous language of Jefferson, "with no auxiliaries but poverty and rigorous economy." The whaling fleet of the United States, in 1846, consisted of seven hundred and thirty-seven vessels. Of the thirty States, only

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five-New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York-were represented; and all of these except New York are the States least blessed in fertility and climate. New Hampshire, having only a single port, sent out only one vessel. Rhode Island, one of the three most diminutive States, equipped fifty-two. Connecticut, a small State, sent out one hundred and twenty-four. New York, with her extended territory, vast wealth, and stupendous commercial establishments, sent only eighty-five; and all the rest proceeded from that State, inferior to many others in extent, wealth, and commerce, but superior to them all in intellectual and social development-Massachu

setts.

Wealth does nothing, patronage does nothing, while vigor does everything for the whale fishery. In Great Britain, London resigned it in favor of those poor and obsolete towns, Hull, in England, and Peterhead, in Scotland, as soon as the Government bounties ceased. So of the eighty-five vessels which in 1846 represented New York in the fishery, only one went up from the port of New York, the commercial capital of the State and of the continent, while no less then eight proceeded from Cold Spring, a mere nook in the mountains which crowd toward each other just above the city, as if to prevent the waters of the Hudson from their destined meeting with the tides of the ocean. All the others were sent forth from New Suffolk, Greenport, and Sag Harbor, inconsiderable villages or hamlets on the outward coast of Long Island. Massachusetts exhibits the same case. Boston finds more lucrative employment for her capital in spindles, in railroads, and even in her fields of ice and quarries of granite; and so leaves the profits and toils of the whale fishery to Freetown, Falmouth, Sippican, Wareham, Plymouth, Holmes' Hole, Fall River, Provincetown, Fairhaven, New Bedford, and Nantucket-towns which but for their pursuit of the whale fishery would scarcely have been honored with designation on the chart or names in the gazetteer. Most wondrous of all, Nantucket is a sandy island, fifteen miles long and three miles broad, capable of maintaining by agriculture only one hundred persons, and yet it was the cradle of the whale fishery; and neither any town in America, nor in England, nor even in France, has ever successfully established or at all maintained the whale fishery, without drawing, not merely its knowledge of whale-hunting, but the officers and crews of its vessels, chiefly from that sandy shoal thus rising above the surface of the sea.

Need I dwell here on the whale fishery as a source of national wealth and an element of national force and strength? The number of those who are actively afloat in the pursuit ranges from 15,000 to 20,000, while twenty times that greatest number of persons are indirectly engaged in the culture of hemp and the manufacture of cordage, the building of ships, furnishing their supplies, manufacturing and preparing the oil and whalebone, in sending them to market, and in the various other occupations incidentally connected with the trade. The wealth thus acquired leaves all the resources of the country untouched. Dr. Franklin cheered the fishermen of his day with the apothegm that whosoever took a fish out of the sea always found a piece of silver in his mouth, and our experience has confirmed its truth, although it is now rejected by the commercial writers of England.

We are the second in rank among commercial nations. Our superiority over so many results from our greater skill in ship-building, and our greater dexterity in navigation, and our greater frugality at sea. These elements were developed in the fisheries, and especially in the Northern fishery. We think that we are inferior to no nation in naval warfare. The seamen who have won our brilliant victories on the ocean and on the lakes were trained and disciplined in this the severest of all marine service; and our naval historians agree that it constituted the elementary school of all our nautical science. What, then, would compensate us for the loss or for the decline of the whale fishery!

Mr. President, I have tried to win the favor of the Senate toward the National whale fishery for a purpose. The whales have found a new retreat in the Seas of Ochotsk and Anadir, south of Bhering Straits, and in that part of the Arctic Ocean lying north of them. In 1848, Captain Roys, in the whale ship Superior, passed through those seas and through the straits, braving the perils of an unknown way and an inhospitable climate. He filled his ship in a few weeks, and the news of his success went abroad. In 1849, a fleet of 154 sail went up to this new fishing ground; in 1850, a fleet of 144; and in 1851, a fleet of 145. The vessels are manned with 30 persons each; and their value, including that of the average annual cargoes procured there, is equal to nine millions and thus exceeds by near two millions the highest annual import from China. But these fleets are beset by not only such dangers of their calling as customarily occur on well-explored fishing grounds, but also by the multiplied dangers of shipwreck resulting from the want of accurate topographical knowledge-the only charts of those seas being imperfect and unsatisfactory. While many and deplorable losses were sustained by the fleets of 1849-'50, we have already information of the loss of eleven vessels, one-thirteenth part of the whole fleet of 1851, many of which disasters might have been avoided had there been charts, accurately indicating the shoals and headlands, and also places of sheltered anchorage near them. These facts are represented to us by the merchants, ship-owners, and underwriters, and are confirmed by Lieutenant Maury, who presides in this department of science in the navy as well as in the labors and studies of the National Observatory. We want, then, not bounties nor protection, nor even an accurate survey, but simply an exploration and reconnoissance of those seas, which have so recently become the theatre of profitable adventure and brave achievement of our whale hunters. This service can be performed by officers and crews now belonging to the navy, in two or three vessels which already belong or may be added to it, and would continue at most only throughout two or three years. Happily, the measure involves nothing new, untried, or uncommon. To say nothing of our recent search for the lamented Sir John Franklin, nor of our great exploring expedition under Captain Wilkes, we are already engaged in triangulating a coast survey of the Atlantic shore. Charts, light-houses, and beacons, show the pilot his way, not only over that ocean and among its islands, but along all our rivers and even upon our inland lakes. The absence of similar guides and beacons in the waters now in question results from the fact, that the Pacific coast has but recently fallen under our sway, and Bhering's Straits and the seas they connect have not until now been frequently navigated by the