The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

SPITZBEKOEN. 177captured ; but Nordenskjold asks how such losses could be repaired, and mentions,without adopting it, the opinion of certain naturalists, who speak of migrationsfrom Novaya Zemlya on drift-ice.The walrus, of which 130 were taken during the season by sixteen vessels in1829, has almost disappeared from the southern seaboard, and schools of thirty toforty are now met only on the north side. Multitudes of sea-fowl frequent theisolated rocks and reefs, where their nests are safe from the ravages of the fox.But all these birds, comprising twenty-seven or twenty-eight distinct species, aremigratory, with the exception of the ptarmigan, which remains all the year round.There are no reptiles, and the surrounding waters were long supposed tobe destituteof fish ; but as many as twenty species had been recorded up to the year 1861.Malmgren found fifteen species only of insects, and butterflies, grasshoppers, andcoleoptera are all wanting. In the snows that melt at contact with the sea-waterthere are myriads of phosphorescent Crustacea, which dart about like blue sparks,producing the effect of a vivid display of fireworks.Like the bird of passage, man visits Spitsbergen only during the summerseason. Nevertheless, shipwrecked sailors, hunters, and naturalists have winteredon its shores ; and a Russian named Starashtchin, after passing twenty-three yearsat Green Harbour, an inlet of the Ijs-fiord, on the west coast, died there of oldage in 1826. All the remains of huts, by whomsoever erected, are known as" Russian huts." The archipelago was much more frequented during the lastcentury than at present. At that epoch the great cetacea swarmed in the surroundingseas, and were yearly hunted by as ruanjr as 12,000 whalers. Villages built ofplanks were erected under the shelter of the headlands ; temporary internationalfairs were held on the beach ; and regular battles at times took place between thecrews of the rival or hostile fleets.The finest village was Smeerenberg, belongingto the Dutch, who were the most numerous and energetic. Here a whole quarter,known as the " Haarlem Kitchen," was occupied by those engaged in boiling downthe blubber.During the period between 1669 and 1778, 14,167 Dutch whalers,frequenting the waters especially in the west and north-west, captured 57,590animals, yielding a profit of £3,710,000.Smeerenberg, which stands at the north-west corner of the great island, wasvisited in 1878 by the Dutch schooner, Willem Barents, when a monument waserected, in the name of the nation, to the navigators who discovered thearchipelago, and to their fellow-countrymen who here perished. On the samecoast the Basques, the Hanseatic traders, the Danes, and the Norwegians hadtheir chief fishing stations. Farther south is Magdalena Bay, which has beencarefully explored by naturalists, and on the north-east Foul Bay, one of the mostfrequented havens. Still farther north are the Norway Isles, where Sabine madehis magnetic observations, and which became the central point for the astronomicalobservations of Nordenskjold and his associates.This spot, or some neighbouringheadland, might perhaps be the most convenient site for one of those circumpolarobservatories which Weyprecht proposes to establish for the purpose of studyingin all their details the meteorological perturbations of the arctic regions. In