Baffin’s Bay was suggested as an excellent fishing-station, by the voyager whose name it bears, so early as the year 1616, when his memorable navigation was performed. Baffin, in a letter addressed to J. Wostenholm, esq., observes, that great numbers of whales occur in the bay, and that they are easy to be struck; and, though ships cannot reach the proper places until toward the middle of July, “yet they may well tarry till the last of August, in which space much business may be done, and good store of oil made.” To this situation, where the whales have never been molested until recently, it appears they still resort in the same manner, and in similar numbers, as in the time of Baffin. In 1817, two or three of the Davis’s Strait whalers proceeded through the strait into Baffin’s Bay, to a much greater length than they were in the habit of adventuring, where, in the months of July and August, they found the sea clear of ice, and in some parts abounding with whales. A Leith ship, which, it appears, advanced the furthest, made a successful fishery in lat. 76°-77°, after the season when it was usual for ships to depart. This fact having become generally known, several other ships followed the example, in the season of 1818, and persevered through the barrier of ice lying in 74°-75° towards the north. After they had succeeded in passing this barrier, they found, as in the preceding year, a navigable sea, where several ships met with considerable success in the fishery, at a very advanced period of the season. This discovery is likely to prove of great importance to the fishery of Davis’s Strait. Ships, which fail of success in the old stations, will still, in the new fishery, have a reserve of the most promising character. Hence, instead of this fishery being necessarily closed in July, the period when the whales have usually made their final retreat from the old fishing-stations, it will in future be extended to the end of August at least; and it may ultimately appear that there will be little danger of ships being permanently frozen up, unless previously beset in the ice during any part of the month of September. CHAPTER III. ACCOUNT OF THE MODERN WHALE-FISHERY, AS CONDUCTED AT SPITZBERGEN.