Many think that the first who undertook so perilous a task as that of Whale fishing must have been eccentric hot heads. According to those who think so, that perilous chase could never have originated with the prudent men of the North, but must have been initiated by the Basques, those daring hunters and fishers who were so well accustomed to their own capricious sea, the Gulf of Gascony, where they fished the Tunny. Here they first saw the huge Whales at play and pursued them, frenzied by the hope of such enormous prey, and pursued them still, onward and onward, no matter whither; even to the confines of the pole. Here the poor Colossus fancied it must needs be safe, for it could not fancy any one would be desperate enough to follow it thither, and so it went tranquilly to sleep. But our Basque mad-caps approached it stealthily and silently. Tightening his red belt around his waist, the boldest and most active of the Basque sailors leaped from the deck right on to the back of the sleeping monster, and, fearlessly or carelessly, drove the harpoon home to the very eye. Poor Whale! CHAPTER II. DISCOVERY OF THE THREE OCEANS. Who opened up to men the great distant navigation? Who revealed the Ocean, and marked out its zones and its liquid highways? Who discovered the secrets of the Globe? The Whale and the Whaler! And all this before Columbus and the famous gold seekers, who have monopolized all the glory, found again, with much outcry about their discovery, what had so long before been discovered by the Whalers. That crossing of the Ocean which was so boastfully celebrated in the fifteenth century, had often been made, not only by the narrow passage between Iceland and Greenland, but also by the open sea; for the Basques went to Newfoundland. The smallest danger was the mere voyage, for these men, who went to the very end of the then world, to challenge the Whale to single combat. To steer right away into the Northern seas, to attack the mighty monster, amid darkness and storms, with the dense fog all around and the foaming waves below, those who could do this, were, believe it well, not the men to shrink from the ordinary dangers of the voyage. Noble warfare; great school of courage! That Fishery was not then, as it is now, an easy war to wage, made from a distance, and with a potently murderous machine. No; the fisher then struck with his own strong hand, impelled and guided by his own fearless heart; and he risked life to take life. The men of that day killed but few Whales, but they gained infinitely in maritime ability, in patience, in sagacity, and in intrepidity. They brought back less of oil; but more, far more, of glory.