Book Description

Excerpt from History of the American Whale Fishery From Its Earliest Inception to the Year 1876 The North American Review, in 1834, in an article on the Whale Fishery, says, A few years since, two Russian discovery ships came in sight of a group of cold, inhospi table islands in the Antarctic Ocean. The commander imagined himself a discoverer, and doubtless was prepared with drawn sword and with the flag of his sovereign flying over his head to take possession in the name of the Czar. At this time he was becalmed in a dense fog. Judge of his surprise, when the fog cleared away, to see a little sealing sloop from Connecticut as quietly riding between his ships as if lying in the waters of Long Island Sound. He learned from the captain that the islands were already well known, and that he had just returned from exploring the shores of a new land at the south; upon which the Russian gave vent to an expression too hard to be repeated, but sufficiently significant of his opinion of American enterprise. After the captain of the sloop, he named the discovery 'palmer's Land, ' in which the American acquiesced, and by this name it appears to be designated on all the recently-published Russian and English charts. A similar experience awaited the English ship Caribou, Captain Cabins, who came in sight of Hurd's Island, and, like the Russian, thought it hitherto unknown land. The similarity was carried still further by the appearance of the schooner Oxford, of Fairhaven (tender to the Arab), the captain of which informed him that the island was discovered by them eighteen months before. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.