Round About the North Pole

by W. J. Gordon

Cheerful and resourceful as they were, their fits of depression were not infrequent. "Our extremities being so many, made us sometimes in impatient speeches to break forth against the causers of our miseries; but then again, our consciences telling us of our own evil deservings, we took it either for a punishment upon us for our former wicked lives; or else for an example of God's mercy in our wonderful deliverance: humbling ourselves therefore, under the mighty hand of God, we cast down ourselves before him in prayer, two or three times a day, which course we constantly held all the time of our misery."

Their prospects got worse, but they never lost a little hope. "The new year now began: as the days began to lengthen, so the cold began to strengthen; which cold came at last to that extremity, as that it would raise blisters on our flesh, as if we had been burnt with fire, and if we touched iron at any time it would stick to our fingers like bird-lime: sometimes if we went but out of doors to fetch in a little water, the cold would nip us in such a sort that it made us as sore as if we had been beaten in some cruel manner."

Provisions were running low; the men began to talk of famine, and the outlook became daily gloomier until the 3rd of February. "This proved a marvellous cold day; yet a fair and clear one; about the middle whereof, all clouds now quite dispersed and night's sable curtain drawn, Aurora with her golden face smiled once again upon us, at her rising out of her bed; for now the glorious sun with his glittering beams began to gild the highest tops of the lofty mountains. The brightness of the sun and the whiteness of the snow, both together, were such as that it was able to revive even a dying spirit. But to make a new addition to our new joy, we might perceive two bears (a she one with her cub) now coming towards our tent; whereupon we, straight arming ourselves with our lances, issued out of the tent to await her coming. She soon cast her greedy eyes upon us, and with full hopes of devouring us she made the more haste unto us; but with our hearty lances we gave her such a welcome as that she fell down and biting the very snow for anger."

Then more bears came to be eaten; then the birds began to arrive, and the foxes to come out of their winter earths to be trapped to the number of fifty; then the reindeer returned; and then, on the 25th May, two ships of Hull came into the sound from which a boat's crew landing unperceived came close up to the tent and shouted "Hey!" And Ayers, the only man at the moment in the outer tent, shouted "Ho!"—and Pellham and his shipmates had proved it to be possible to live through a winter in Spitsbergen.

CHAPTER II
SPITSBERGEN

(continued)

The summer town of Smeerenberg—Himkoff winters in North East Land—Phipps reaches 80° 48´—Scoresby the elder reaches 81° 30´—Scoresby the younger—Voyage of the Dorothea and Trent under Buchan and Franklin—Parry reaches 82° 45´—Torell and Nordenskiöld—Carlsen sails round Spitsbergen—Swedish North Polar expedition under Nordenskiöld—Lamont—The Diana coal mine—Leigh Smith—Conway.

This wintering of the Salutation men occurred when the Spitsbergen fisheries were most flourishing, the prosperity continuing for seven more years. So lucrative was the trade that on Amsterdam Island under Hakluyt Headland, within fifteen miles of 80° north latitude, about as far from the North Pole as St. Malo is from John o' Groat's, there sprang up as a summer resort the Dutch village of Smeerenberg. Such was the bustle produced by the yearly visit of two or three hundred double-manned vessels, containing from twelve thousand to eighteen thousand men, that this village of the farthest north was as busy as a manufacturing town. The incitement of prices proportionate to the latitude attracted hundreds of annual settlers, who throve on the sale of brandy, wine, tobacco, and sundries to the whale-fishers in shops of all varieties, including bakehouses, where the blowing of a horn let the sailors know that the bread had just been drawn hot from the oven. In fact, hot rolls and every delicacy could be had in Smeerenberg, which the Dutch averred was as flourishing as Batavia, founded by them a few years before. And when winter was just about due every man—and woman—went back to Holland. But the life of Smeerenberg was a short and a merry one, for in 1640 the shore fisheries were failing, and a year or so afterwards the lingerers of its last season left it for good, clearing out from its houses of brick and wood, demolishing its furnaces, removing its copper cauldrons and coolers and casks and everything that could be taken away, and leaving it in desolation to be occupied in the next and subsequent summers by polar bears.

Like all seaside resorts it had its rival. Close by is the Cookery-of-Haarlem, abandoned at the same time, but rather more hurriedly. When Martens went there on the 15th of July, 1671, he found four houses still standing, in one of which were "several barrels or kardels that were quite decayed, the ice standing in the same shape the vessels had been made of: an anvil, smith's tongs, and other tools belonging to the cookery, were frozen up in the ice; the kettle was still standing as it was set, and the wooden troughs stood by it." Behind these houses "are high mountains," he continues, "if one climbeth upon these, as we do on others, and doth not mark every step with chalk, one doth not know how to get down again: when you go up you think it to be very easy to be down; but when you descend it is very difficult and dangerous, so that many have fallen and lost their lives." Absurd as this chalking of the steps may seem, there have been many who have taken the hint from the careful Martens when climbing in Spitsbergen, and many who have regretted not having done so.

In ordinary summers the west side of Spitsbergen is clear of ice, not so the eastern side, the difference being due to the Gulf Stream, which, though evidently failing, is traceable along the coast round Hakluyt Headland and up to the ice barrier. In addition to this there is the general cause, whatever it may be, which makes the western coasts of all Arctic lands, isolated or not, warmer than the eastern. Greenland, for instance, is more approachable in summer from Davis Strait than from the Greenland Sea, Novaya Zemlya from Barents Sea than from Kara Sea, and so on with all the islands and peninsulas of Asia and America. Hence all this whaling was confined practically to the western harbours of West Spitsbergen, the largest of the group of islands. The next largest, North East Land, was never much visited except from Hinlopen Strait, though the Russians from time to time took some interest in the north and east harbours, and would have taken more, for it abounded in reindeer, if the ice had not made the landing an enterprise of some difficulty.