The whale fishery of these shores is long extinct. The Biscayan
whale was supposed to be extinct likewise. But like the ibex, and
some other animals which man has ceased to hunt, because he fancies
that he has killed them all, they seem inclined to reappear. For in
1854 one was washed ashore near St. Jean de Luz, at news whereof
Eschricht, the great Danish naturalist, travelled night and day from
Copenhagen, and secured the skeleton of the new-old monster.
But during the latter part of the Middle Ages, and on--if I recollect
aright--into the seventeenth century, Bayonne, Biarritz, Guettary,
and St. Jean de Luz, sent forth their hardy whale-fishers, who slew
all the whales of the Biscayan seas, and then crossed the Atlantic,
to attack those of the frozen North.
British and American enterprise drove them from the West coast of the
Atlantic; and now their descendants are content to stay at home and
take the sardine-shoals, and send them in to Bayonne on their
daughters' heads.
Pretty enough it was, at least in outward seeming, to meet a party of
those fisher-girls, bare-legged, high-kilted, lithe as deer,
trotting, at a long loping pace, up the high road toward Bayonne,
each with her basket on her head, as she laughed and sang, and tossed
her black hair, and flashed her brown eyes, full of life and the
enjoyment of life.
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