The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

BEAR ISLAND.1C9the Dutchman Barents, Bear Island, so named from an animal here killed, wasagain sighted seven years afterwards by the Englishman Bennett, who called itCherie, after his patron of that name, whence the Cherry Island still occurring onso many maps. At present it is frequently visited by Norwegian fishers for thesake of the sharks, cod, and even herrings swarming round its cavernous cliffs.Temporary curing places have been established on its shores, and a house nowstands on the banks of a creek on its nortb side. But the cetacea, formerly socommon, have almost entirely disappeared. In 1608 one vessel alone capturednearly a thousand in seven hours.Till recently this island was described by all navigators as of small size,and even in 1864 Nordenskjold and Duner estimated its extent at no morethan 26 square miles. But the careful surveys of the Swedish explorers of1868, amongst whom was Xordenskjuld himself, showed a superficies of 260 squaremiles, or exactly tenfold previous estimates. A portion of the surface is coveredwith lakes and marshes, and in the south-east the land rises to a series of hills,one of which, named Mount Misery by the English, from its dismal appearance,risr«, according to Mohn, 1,492 feet above vast snow-fields; but there are notrue glaciers. The rocks, containing lodes of galena, were first explored by thegeologist Keilhau. They consist of carboniferous limestones and sandstones,with several ricb coal beds, showing the impressions of sigillaria and otherfossil plants. These deposits have already been utilised by steamers sailing bythe coast. "When these strata were formed Bear Island constituted a part of avast continent, reaching probably to North America, to judge, at least, from theidentity of the carboniferous flora in all the islands of the Arctic Ocean. Lateron the continent subsided, leaving nothing but these scattered fragments above thesurface."When the coal was formed the climate of Bear Island, now colder, perhaps,than Spitzbergen, resembled that of Central Europe. Of eighteen species of plantscollected by Xordenskjold and Malmgren in its coal-fields and rocks, fifteen areidentical with those of the Swiss carboniferous flora. But now how desolate isthis spot, well named originally by Barents Jammerberg, or Mount Desolation !Its flora comprises only about thirty phanerogamous plants, amongst which is aspecies of rhododendron, besides eighty species of lichens, whose verdure, seenfrom a distance, here and there resembles grassy plots. Amongst the twelvespecies of insects there are no coleoptera, and all, according to Malmgren,present peculiar forms, as if they were here indigenous. In summer the island iscovered with mews and wild ducks, which here alight before continuing theirnorthern journey. In autumn these migratory birds again stop here on theirreturn southwards.Bear Island is the southern headland of a submarine plateau stretching tothe north and north-east to the unknown regions of the Frozen Oeean. Thechannel, 120 miles broad, separating it from the nearest islands, varies in depthfrom 160 to 1,070 feet, and in 1857 the whole space was covered by a continuousbank of ice.