This change, however, in my Father’s position as a fisherman, admits of a satisfactory explanation. The circumstances on which success was now dependent had, in some most essential particulars, changed. Superior knowledge of the Arctic ices, and consummate skill in penetrating and navigating the compact or tortuous interruptions to the usual retreats of the whales, which with _him_ were so characteristic, were now no longer available. So greatly had the whales been reduced in number, apparently, by the enormous slaughter of their species during the last quarter of a century; and so much scattered had the residue been by the perpetual harass and attacks to which they had been subjected, that the positions, wherein the _opportunity_ for making a successful voyage used to be constantly afforded, were now almost entirely deserted. Hence the enterprise and skill, enabling the fisherman to take the lead in penetrating the ice, which had been wont to be eminently rewarded, had now become of little avail. No one could calculate on the positions in which fish might be found. In places apparently most likely, not a fish, perhaps, was to be seen; whilst in circumstances least expected success might be met with. And although a few active, enterprising, and clever men, were now and then found taking a lead in respect to proportionate success, yet the fishery altogether had become very precarious; so increasingly precarious, indeed, that within about half-a-dozen years of this time the whale-fishery of the Greenland seas proved so utterly unremunerative, as to be all but abandoned as a distinct commercial enterprise. The port of Hull, for example, which during the whole period of my Father’s command of a whaler had, on an average, sent out twenty-two ships annually to the Greenland fishery,—in 1828, only five years after he discontinued the pursuit, had only one Greenlandman, and the year following none.