- JHHHHH » ? H ■ I t I w x^ presenteb to TIbe Tnntversitp of Toronto Xtbrarp to 1bume 38laUe, Esq. from tbc boohe of ZIbe late honourable JEowarD Blafee Chancellor of tbc Tflnivcrsitx? of (Toronto (1876*1900) n i SEASONS WITH THE SEA-HORSES ; OB, SPORTING ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. BY JAMES LAMONT, ESQ., F.G.S. "There we hunted the walrus, the narwal, and the seal. Aha! 'twas a noble game. And like the lightning's flame Flew our harpoons of steel." — Lonu fellow • %* NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FHASKLU' BQDABE. 1861. PRS &BS» \Ctb n»A,TE. Bf&inttinii. TO SIR CHARLES LYELL, F.R.S., F.G.S., &c. My dear Sir Charles, A copy of your delightful Principles of Geology has been my unvarying and instructive companion during ten years of adventurous -wanderings, during which every thing I have seen seems to me entirely confirmatory of your geo- logical views. I therefore dedicate this little book to you ; and I shall esteem myself fortunate if any of the observations contain- ed in it shall be the means of riveting or strengthening a link in the beautiful chain of evidence by which you have in such a masterly manner demonstrated the perfect ade- quacy of present causes to remodel the surface of the earth. And with sincere respect I remain, my dear Sir Charles, yours very truly, JAMES Lamont, F.G.S. Knockdow, Arqyleshibe. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. First Trip to Spitzbergen in 1858. — Find schooner Yacht and light Gigs unsuitable. — Determine to go again in 1859. — Hire a suitable Vessel and Crew, and build two Boats. — Lord David Kennedy agrees to accompany me. — Contested Election delays our starting. — Result of Poll unfortunate alike for Walruses and Constituency. — Preliminary Trip to Guernsey. — Sail from Leith. — Steamer a little out in her Reckoning. — Dreadful Famine in Lerwick. — Gale. — Nam- sen Fiord and River. — Salmon Fishing. — Terry's Breech- loading Rifles Page 17 CHAPTER H. Hammerfest. — The "Anna Louisa." — Dr. de Jongh. — Nor- wegian Grouse. — Sail for Spitzbergen. — Shark Fishery. — Bear or Cherie Island. — Multitudes of Sea-fowl. — Sight Spitzbergen. — Post-office. — Wybe Jan's Water. — Meet the Ice. — Brig Nordby. — Captain Ericson. — Disastrous Spring- fishing. — Empress of India. — Loss of a Telescope and a Man's Life. — Boy-walrus. — Thick Ice. — Meet the Sloop, and sail in company to the East. — Shift our Flag, and send the Yacht to Bell Sound 28 CHAPTER III. Preparations. — Description of a Walrus-boat, and Implements used. — Harpoons. — Lances. — The Haak-pick, or Seal-hook. — Axes. — Knives. — Ice-anchors. — Compass 43 X CONTEXTS. CHAPTER IV. Crow's-nest. — Look-out. — First Walrus seen. — Find them very shy. — Great Ice-pack. — Two Walruses shot. — Luy-to in a dense Fog. — Wreck of a Sloop in the Ice. — Cure for frost-bitten Feet. — Sketch of the Spitsbergen Walrus-hunt- er.—Profits of the Trade.— Truck System.— Cold.— Chil- blains.— Seal-shooting on the Ice. — Method of hunting the Great Seal. — Dimensions of Great Seal. — Seal-shooting in the Water Page 52 CHAPTER V. Hunting the Walrus. — Windfall. — Maternal Affection of Wal- rus.— Seal's Dinner. — Molluscae. — Whale's Food. — Herd of Walruses. — Four killed. — Escape of a fine Bull. — Cutting up the Blubber. — Walrus Hide and Blubber. — Accommoda- tions of "Anna Louisa." — "Whittling" a great Resource. — Vast Herds of Sea-horses. — "Jaging" them. — Exciting Sport. — Man killed by a Walrus. — Spitzbergen Gazette of June 16th.— Walrus Veal or Foal 68 CHAPTER VI. Sabbath Observance. — Rewarded for ditto. — Our first Bear seen. — Kill him. — Lose the Sloop. — Quantities of Eggs. — Drift-wood. — Comes from Siberia. — Can not be in situ. — Geology of Thousand Islands. — Red Snow. — Caused by Mute of Alca Alle. — Bear Battae, and its Consequences. — Deplorable Effects of smelling Brandy 87 CHAPTER Vn. Northeast Gale. — Bears' Grease. — Errors in the Charts. — Ge- ology.— Limestone. — Coal. — Creation of subalpine Flats. — Deeva Bay. — " Fast" Ice. — Bear's Mode of catching Seals. — Whale's Bones. — Glen-Turritt. — Large Extent of fixed Ice. — Many Seals shot. — Become my own Harpooner. — Glacier with detached Moraine 100 CONTENTS. XI CHAPTER Vm. Large Bear shot. — Adventures of an Opera-glass. — Size and Weight of Polar Bear. — Stories of Bears. — She-Bear and Cubs. — Break-up of the Fast Ice. — Kill the old Bear, and catch the Cubs alive. — Shocking case of filial Ingrati- tude Page 117 CHAPTER IX. The Ice disperses. — Lose a Bear and Cub. — Pot 600 lbs. of Bears'-grease. — Skins. — Slow going. — Seals attracted by Whistling. — Glaciers on the Coast. — Noises from them. — Submarine Bank. — Shooting Walruses. — Walruses fighting. — Walrus Tusks. — Awkward Customer. — Ivory. — Story of Mermaids. — Osteological Peculiarity. — Cook loses his Watch.— Shoot a Bear.— Cold Bath 131 CHAPTER X. Boat-race. — Visit. — Ingenious Harpoon. — Hippopotamus. — Phoca Vitulina, or Little Seal. — Phoca Hispida, or Jan May- en Seal. — Dreadful Smell of Cargo. — Ferocity of young Bear. — Drift-ice. — Stones and Clay on Icebergs. — Warm Day. — Beautiful Caverns in the Ice. — Upset of an Iceberg. — Young Ice. — Noises from Glacier. — Crimping a Walrus. — Ivory Gulls. — See a Bear. — Curious Delusion. — Gulf Stream and Arctic Current. — Danger of getting embayed. — Narrow Escape 145 CHAPTER XL Dense and sudden Fog. — Our Hours and Habits. — Supplies run short. — Meet the Yacht. — Their bad Success in Sport. — Novel Bullet-mould. — Geological Specimens. — Part com- pany again. — Medical Treatment of sick Men. — Water up. — News. — Old Acquaintance. — Gradual Extinction of the Walrus. — They are receding farther North. — Nova Zembla. — Illness of young Bear. — Attempt to escape. — Aged Bull- Xll CONTENTS. Walrus. — His probable Reminiscences. — Coal and Fossils. — Commander Gillies' Land. — Northeast Spitzbergen. — Bear shot from the Deck of the Sloop Page 159 CHAPTER XH. Walruses leave the Banks and go upon Land. — Vast Herds ashore. — Frightful Massacre. — Just Retribution. — Cargo of Bones. — Beautiful Day and sudden Change. — Early north- ern Voyagers. — Scoresby's Opinion. — Open Polar Basin a mere Chimera. — Dr. Kane. — North Pole. — Scheme for reach- ing the Pole. — Parry's Sledge Expedition, and why it fail- ed.— Alexei MarkhofPs Expedition, and his difficult Re- turn 1 73 CHAPTER Xm. Whales' Bones. — Rapid Elevation of the Land. — Early Whale- fishery. — Shallowing of the Sea. — Trench plowed by an Ice- berg.— Last Day at the Sea-horses. — Successful Stalk and double Shot. — Lose two Harpoons. — Very bad Luck. — Dif- ficulty of shooting Walruses. — Gale. — Wrecks in Spitz- bergen.— Insurance. — Kill a White Whale. — Description of the same. — Sail to the Rendezvous 185 CHAPTER XIV. Smeerenberg, or Blubber Town. — Agremens of ditto. — Dis- covery of Spitzbergen. — Barentz. — Whale-fishery. — At- tempts to colonize the Country, and to make it a penal Set- tlement.— They fail. — The West Indies versus Spitzbergen. — Russian Robinson Crusoes. — Wintering Establishment. — How conducted. — Awful Mortality. — Final Tragedy. — Death of eighteen Men from Scurvy and Hunger. — Ingeo- ious Counter-irritant. — Russian Bath. — Cricket. — Boats sewed together. — Post-office. — Signs of Deer. — Kill three Geese with Ball. — Find the "Ginevra," and change into her. — Nautical Nimrods. — Amusing Walrus-hunt. — Gun bursts 109 CONTENTS. Xlll CHAPTER XV. Bitter Cold. — Reindeer-shooting. — Three right and left Shots. — Delight of the Sailors. — Black Fox. — Ponche a la Spitz- berg. — Description of the Reindeer. — High Condition he at- tains.— Excellence of his Flesh. — His Ignorance of Man. — Anecdotes. — Fine Valley. — Unexplored Channel. — Near Heinlopen Straits. — Unjust Attack. — Marrow-bones. — Ice- borne Boulders. — Good " Bag." — Two singular Mountains. — Thymen's Straits. — Meritorious Deer. — Receipt for Ka- bobs. — Splendid deer Forest. — Rejoin the Sloop. Page 216 CHAPTER XVI. Dead "Walrus found. — Bears nearly escape, but are caught. — Gale and Ice. — Mynherr Holmengreen. — Presents more Kaffirorum. — Send home the Sloop. — Result of Ericson's eight Months' Voyage. — South Cape. — Sugar-loaf Mountain. — " Right Whales." — Parasitical Gulls. — Practical Joke. — Arctic Fauna. — Chain of Subsistence. — Divergence of White Bear from original Stock. — Probable Origin of the Walrus. — And of the Seal. — Of the Cetaceans. — Changes in the South African Antelopes, caused by Desiccation of that country 237 CHAPTER XVII. Horn and Bell Sounds. — Ice Fiord. — Pickled Reindeer's Tongues. — Arctic Foxes. — Geology. — Raised Beaches. — Fossil Cannon-balls. — Awful Avalanche. — Begins to get dark at Night. — Reach Hammerfest. — Sell our Cargo. — Take Leave of our Crew. — Sail home. — Equinoctial Gales. — Leith. — " Glut" of Bears in the British Market. — Conclu- sion.— Game List 258 Appendix 271 ILLUSTRATIONS. 1. Chase of the Walrus Frontispiece. 2. The Author's Yacht, the " Ginevra" Vignette. 3. View on the River Namsen Page 25 4. "Walruses on the Ice 73 5. Seal-shooting 113 6. She-Bear and Cubs 128 7. Reindeer-shooting 219 8. Group of Reindeer 260 Map of Authob's Route at the end. SEASONS WITH THE SEA-HORSES. SPORTING ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. CHAPTER I. First Trip to Spitsbergen in 1858. — Find schooner Yacht and light Gigs unsuitable. — Determine to go again in 1859. — Hire a suitable Vessel and Crew, and build two Boats. — Lord David Kennedy agrees to accompany me. — Contested Election delays our starting. — Result of Poll unfortunate alike for Walruses and Constituency. — Preliminary Trip to Guernsey. — Sail from Leith. — Steamer a little out in her Reckoning. — Dreadful Famine in Lerwick. — Gale. — Nam- sen Fiord and River. — Salmon Fishing. — Terry's Breech- loading Rifles. In August, 1858, while cruising in my yacht the "Ginevra," of 142 tons, on the coast of Norway, I was induced, by the accounts I received of rein- deer and other game to be met with in Spitzbergen, to make a trip across from Hammerfest to that country. It being late in the season before we got there, our stay was very short, and our sport was limited to killing a few reindeer, seals, and Brent B 18 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. geese, and to assist in the harpooning of one or two walruses, in the boats of a sealing brig, which we fell in with among the ice. I, however, saw enough of Spitzbergen to convince me that wonderful sport, and of a most original description, was to be ob- tained there by any one who would go at the prop- er season, with a suitably equipped vessel and prop- er boats, manned by a crew of men accustomed to the ice and to the pursuit of the walrus and the seal. Although I have the honor to append the letters F. G. S. to my name, I make no pretensions to the character of a scientific geologist, but I was also very much impressed with the interesting field Spitzbergen affords to a votary of that noble sci- ence, and particularly with the strong evidence to be met with in support of the theory of the gradual upheaval of the land in that remote part of the world, and I was anxious to investigate farther this interesting phenomenon. I perceived on this occasion that nothing could be more utterly inapplicable for ice-navigation than a long fore-and-aft rigged schooner yacht, as in thread- ing the intricate mazes of the ice there was no pos- sibility of stopping her "way" to avoid collisions, as is done by backing the topsails of a square- rigged vessel, and her frail flanking and thin cop- per were exposed to constant destruction from the ice. The dandified "ultramarine blue" painted gigs were also totally unsuited for the rough work of DETERMINE TO GO AGAIN. 19 pushing in among the ice in pursuit of the seal and the walrus; indeed, it was very fortunate for us that we did not succeed in harpooning one of the latter mighty amphibia? from the yacht's boats, for my subsequent experience of the strength and fe- rocity of these animals leads me to believe that he would infallibly have pulled us all to the bottom of the sea. In the spring of 1859, therefore, I made up my mind to have another trip to Spitzbergen, and to go about it in a more systematic way ; so, early in the season, I wrote to a gentleman in Hammerfest, who had been good enough to accompany me on my previous trip as an amateur pilot, requesting him to hire for me a small, stout "jagt,"* suitably planked, and provided with a square topsail and every thing requisite for a summer's campaign against the ferae naturae of the arctic regions ; and including casks to stow their blubber in, as I ex- pected to be reimbursed for at least a part of the heavy outlay these preparations entailed by the proceeds of skins and oil. I also ordered two suit- able whale- (or rather walrus-) boats to be construct- ed in Hammerfest, of a size slightly larger than those commonly used, so as to admit of an amateur sitting comfortably in the stern without his having necessarily to act as one of the boat's crew ; and, finally, I desired my agent to engage two skillful * A small sloop without a topmast, a rig very general among the Scandinavian coasters. 20 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. harpooners, and men enough to man the boats and navigate the "jagt" — English sailors being al- most as useless as the boats for this description of work. On mentioning my projected expedition to a friend, renowned as a sportsman with the rifle and the spear on the plains of India, and telling him of the sport I expected among the icebergs of the North, he at once agreed to join me, and entered with heart and purse into the arrangements ; and here let me state that, during ten years I have spent in traveling in different parts of the world, I have never fallen in with a pleasanter and more useful companion, or a keener and a braver sportsman, than Lord David Kennedy. When we were nearly ready to start, and I was superintending the outfitting of my yacht at South- ampton, I was most unexpectedly requested by the Liberal party of a Scottish county to become their candidate in the general election about to take place ; so, deeming it my duty to sacrifice my amusement to my country's good, I stayed the preparations for sea, and for the ten following days I was engaged in all the excitement of an electoral contest. The result, by a very narrow majority, proved unfortunate for the walruses, although per- haps the cynical reader may be disposed to add, "fortunate for the constituency,11 and I was once more at liberty to proceed on my intended voyage. After a visit to Guernsey for the purpose of STEAMER OUT IN HER RECKONING. 21 laying in a supply of cold-repelling fluids, etc., 1 sent the yacht round to Leith, while I traveled north by land, as I am not the least ashamed to confess that I have a strong preference for land- traveling when it is practicable. On May 31st the yacht arrived in Leith Roads, but a violent gale of east wind prevented us from sailing for several days; however, we got under way at daylight on the 6th of June ; but the day being calm, we were only off the village of Elie, at the mouth of the Firth of Forth, at seven in the evening, so I landed to pay a visit to some rela- tions living there whom I had not seen for several years, and to procure some small stores which the steward had forgotten, and which he declared were "indispensable." On the 8th, during a dense fog, we were off Ab- erdeen by our dead-reckoning, and were nearly run down by a tug steamer, from the deck of which a voice hailed in a strong Northumbrian dialect, re- questing to know "how far they might be from Shields." I never saw any people look more sur- prised than they did on being told "about 240 miles," as they had lost their way in the fog for two or three days, and imagined themselves to be still only a few miles from the mouth of the Tyne. We beat through the middle of the Orkney Isl- ands on the 9th, and on the 11th, finding the wind still desperately ahead, with a heavy sea, we thought it would entail no great loss of time to put into 22 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. Lerwick to replenish our stock of fresh meat and vegetables, which, as well as fish and butter, we imagined, in the innocence of our hearts, must abound here ; but, to our great surprise and dis- gust, we found there was no market, and scarcely any thing eatable to be bought. Will it be be- lieved that in a sea-port town of 3000 inhabitants, and so far advanced in civilization as to be lighted by gas, there was actually not a joint of fresh meat, a pound of fresh butter, nor even any fresh fish to be purchased? After much foraging we did suc- ceed in obtaining some milk, some indifferent bread, and some stale eggs. I went into a chemist's shop to purchase some photographic chemicals, and upon my remarking to the worthy proprietor that Ler- wick appeared to be suffering from famine at pres- ent, he replied, "Oh yes, sir, this time of year is what we call the starvation months here." As I was unwilling to sacrifice a whole day by waiting until sheep could be got from the country, we went on board and prepared to set sail, when, just as the anchor was atrip, two boats pushed off from the shore in hot haste: one of these conveyed some fisher-boys, who had just taken a miraculous draught of eight herrings, the first of the season, as they told us. The other coble conveyed a hungry- looking two-year-old Leicester sheep, in custody of its proprietor, a neighboring farmer who had heard of our necessities. The purchase of the sheep and the eight herrings GALE. — NAMSEN FIORD. 23 was negotiated in a very few minutes, and then, "shaking the dust from our feet11 on this wretched, poverty-stricken village, we renewed our hammer- ing against the N.E. wind outside. The wind hung in this direction, i. e., straight in our teeth, until the 15th, when it increased to a gale, against which we could make no progress at all. We were by this time off the coast of Norway, and recogniz- ing the mountains as being those lying about the mouth of the Namsen Fiord, I determined to get inside for shelter until the gale should abate ; and I thought that as we appeared likely to have the Nor-Easter all the way, we might as well take the opportunity of replenishing our fresh water and fuel. We accordingly ran up this noble fiord, and at 8 A.M. on the 16th cast anchor in a beautiful lit- tle bay opposite to the gloomy precipices forming the island of Otteroe. Most extraordinary laby- rinthian clusters of islands and rocks lay on each side of the entrance to this fiord, but the passage is wide and clear, and being plainly laid down in the excellent Norwegian government chart, we had no difficulty about finding our way in. I set the crew to gather firewood and fill the water tanks, while we took a walk to the top of a neighboring pine- clad mountain. The Norwegian summer was just commencing, and every thing looked extremely fresh and beautiful. The celebrated Namsen River runs into the head of this fiord. This queen of rivers is well known 24 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. to anglers as being the finest salmon stream in Norway, or perhaps in the world. In by-gone days I had myself passed two summers (one of them in company with a dear friend now gathered to his fathers) in salmon fishing in that splendid river, and recollections came thick upon me now of the pleasant hours passed in his society, and of the thirty and forty pounders which we hooked and captured in the gigantic pools and magnificent rushing streams of the Namsen.* The good fish- ing water is a considerable way up, and only ex- tends for about twelve miles of the river, when the salmon are stopped by one of the finest waterfalls in the world, called by the natives "Fiskum Foss" (Anglice, "the Salmon's Fair'). This twelve miles of water belongs to many small proprietors, and is divided into six fishing-stations, which for several years back have been regularly let on lease to Brit- ish sportsmen. While the crew were engaged in wooding and watering, we employed ourselves in trying some breech-loading rifles, known as "Terry's patent;" but, although I shot a "loom" (a large species of diver) at 100 yards1 distance with one of these, we * To show the wonderful sport to be met with on this river, I may state, that in the summer of 1854 I killed to my own rod, in thirty days' fishing, 83 salmon, weighing in all 1350 lbs. ; and the best sixty averaging 20 lbs. each. And even this has been far exceeded by others, and particxilarly by the late Sir Charles Blois, who fished this river for many yt terry's breech-loading rifles. 27 both came to the conviction that as sporting weap- ons they were nearly worthless, and were infinitely more troublesome and difficult, both to load and to clean, than the common muzzle-loader. While looking at these rifles in the shop of the inventor and patentee, I had formed a high opinion of them, and the result only showed how difficult it is to form an accurate opinion of any fire-arms without the test of actual practice in the field. I may add, that the principle seems to me to be still more in- applicable to military weapons than to sporting ones, as the mechanism is far too complicated to stand wear and tear and rough usage. I dare say the authorities at the Horse-Guards have since found out this for themselves, as I understand a number of these breech-loaders, in the form of rifled carbines, were contracted for, for the cavalry. The gale having abated, we sailed again on the morning of the 17th, but the wind continuing N.E. we had to beat the whole way north, and did not reach Hammerfest until the 23d. 28 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. CHAPTER II. Ilammerfest. — The "Anna Louisa." — Dr. de Jongh. — Nor- wegian Grouse. — Sail for Spitzbergen. — Shark Fishery. — Bear or Cherie Island. — Multitudes of Sea-fowl. — Sight Spitzbergen. — Post-office. — Wybe Jan's Water. — Meet the Ice. — Brig Nordby. — Captain Ericson. — Disastrous Spring- fishing. — Empress of India. — Loss of a Telescope and a Man's Life. — Boy-walrus. — Thick Ice. — Meet the Sloop, and sail in company to the East. — Shift our Flag, and send the Yacht to Bell Sound. We dropped anchor opposite the British vice- consul's house, and had that worthy official on board to breakfast. He informed us that our "jagt" had been got ready and was waiting for us ; the boats, however, still required to be finished off and painted. Several small vessels engaged in the seal and walrus fishery had gone to Spitzbergen more than a month ago, but nothing had been heard of them since their departure. After breakfast, the gentleman to whom I had written about the preparations came on board, and in company with him we went to inspect the "jagt," boats, etc. I had hitherto been undecided whether to leave the "Ginevra" at Hammerfest, or to»take her also over to Spitzbergen, but the sight and smell of the THE "ANNA LOUISA." 29 cabin of the "Anna Louisa1' at once decided me to stick to the schooner as long as possible. The "Anna Louisa" was an extremely ugly, clumsy little tub of a sloop, of about 30 tons Brit- ish measurement, and was rigged with a particular- ly ill-fitting mainsail, a staysail, a jib, and a small square topsail. She was high at the bow and the stern, and round in the bottom, and altogether look- ed as if the intention of her builder had been that she should make as much leeway as possible, and upset at the first opportunity. The latter fate I afterward learned had very nearly overtaken her the summer before, and her subsequent perform- ances in making leeway did not at all belie her ap- pearance. She had been engaged in a Spitzbergen trip the previous summer, and looked and smelled as if she had not been cleaned since, as the stench of the putrid walrus oil in and all over her was perfectly sickening. Her crew consisted of a "skyppar" or captain, two men rated and paid as harpooners and mates, a cook, and eight other seamen. The captain, the two harpooners, and two of the others had been many times at Spitzbergen, and were considered good and experienced hands. She was fully equipped with harpoons and lines, lances, seal-hooks, axes, blubber-knives, a large bun- dle of white pine sticks, in the rough (to be con- verted into oars and shafts for the lances and Jiar- poons) ; casks for the blubber (at present full of 30 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. water and small coals for ballast) ; salt for the skins ; provisions for the crew, consisting of salt beef and pork, dried fish, butter, rye bread, peas, molasses, tea and coffee, etc, etc As the "Anna Louisa" had a small walrus boat belonging to her, independently of the two being built for us, we determined that, in order to save time, she should sail at once ; so, after a little dif- ficulty in collecting the crew, who seemed more in- clined to the worship of Bacchus than that of Di- ana, we got her off, with a fair wind, on the 26th of June. We had previously arranged with the " skyppar" to rendezvous at a little bay on the southeast corner of Spitzbergen ; and, if that should be unapproachable from ice, then at Bell Sound on the west coast We had to wait three days for the boats to be finished and painted, and, as may be supposed, we soon exhausted the resources of Hammerfest in the way of amusement. I believe the principal fact in connection with it is, that it is the northernmost town in the world, being in lat. 70° 42' N., and long. 23° 35' E., yet from the influence of the Gulf Stream the sea never freezes here. Although great masses of snow still lay on the hills, and even close down to the water's edge, the weather was extreme- ly hot, and the musquitoes as numerous and annoy- ing as I ever knew them in Africa or America. There is a large, ugly, bamy-look'uxf, rod-tiled, and yellow-ochre painted wooden cathedral, which TRADE OF IIAMMERFEST. 31 looks, and I suppose is, big enough to contain the entire population of the place ; the latter amounts to about 1300, who mostly live in miserable, rot- ten-looking wooden huts, although the consuls and some few of the principal merchants have excellent and well-built houses. This was quite the busy season here, and a good deal of trade appeared to be going on, as the har- bor was full of small Russian luggers and other coasting craft. This trade consists chiefly in the exportation of dried fish and walrus-skins to Arch- angel and the other ports on the White Sea ; get- ting from thence, in return, rye meal, salt beef, tar, hemp, and cordage. They also export seal and wal- rus oil, fish oil, and seal-skins to Newcastle and Hamburg, in return for cutlery, hardware, stone- ware, dry goods, etc. Hammerfest, in addition to the honor of being the most northerly town in the world, may assur- edly lay claim to another superlative, viz., that of being the most unsavory place in the universe. The immense quantity of cod, ling, and seythe or coalfish, which are caught on the coast of Finmar- ken, are cured without salt, being merely beheaded and gutted, and laid down on the rocks or hung up on hurdles to dry. There were a great many acres of fish undergoing this process in and around Ham- merfest at the time of our visit, and the whole at- mosphere was redolent of semi-putrid fish in conse- quence. 32 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. There are also several extensive boileries of seal and walrus blubber, and of fish-liver oil, and I am sure that, if the numerous fair sufferers in Europe and America who swallow their daily drams of 1 'pale brown cod-liver oil" were only to see the enormous vats full of rotting seythe livers, and to smell the horrific exhalations from these boiling- houses, it would sadly diminish the profits of the far-famed Dr. De Jongh. We took several walks in the mountains, and shot a few ducks, ptarmigans, and ripas for the ta- ble. I have shot many hundreds of these two last- named birds throughout Norway, and I have not the smallest doubt on my own mind that they are both identical in species with our Scottish ptarmi- gan and red grouse, being merely, as Mr. Darwin would say, "strongly-marked varieties,'1 altered by geographical conditions, such as the greater cold and the necessity for the protection of a plumage more resembling the country they frequent.* I * The ptarmigan is called in Scandinavia the " field-ripa," or hill-grouse ; and the grouse the " dal-ripa," literally " val- ley-grouse." The first frequents the high, rocky hills, and is nowhere very abundant ; it seems to me exactly the same as the ptarmigan, or white grouse of the Scottish mountains. The dal-ripa inhabits the rocky islands and birch-covered hill- sides in great numbers, and, although nearly as gray as the ptarmigan, I have not the slightest doubt of his being the nme bird as our Scottish red grouse, which he exactly resembles in his size, his voice, his flight, his habits, and every thing except his color. SHARK-FISHERY. 33 have very little doubt that, if the dal-ripas were taken to Scotland, or the red grouse to Norway, a few generations would be sufficient to cause them ' to resemble exactly the variety existing in the coun- try to which they were transferred. On the evening of the 28th we got the new boats on board the yacht, having first deposited her frail Cowes gigs in a warehouse ashore, and at 1 A.M. on the 29th I turned the hands up to make sail for Spitzbergen. The wind was very light, and it was long before we got out of sight of the island of So- roen. On the 30th we passed a small vessel engaged in the shark-fishery. This singular pursuit is carried on extensively in the seas lying between Finmarken and Bear Island, where the soundings vary from 100 to 150 fathoms, and the modus operandi is to anchor by long, light hempen cables at about that depth, and then put overboard their lines baited with seal's blubber. When they get a "nibble,1' they drag their victim de profundis by means of a windlass, and when he appears at the surface they farther secure him with harpoons, and dispatch him with spears and axes. The arctic shark (Squalus Groenlandicus or Borealis) is very large, and his liver, which is the sole object of his persecution, af- A species of grouse or ptarmigan is also well known to in- habit Spitzbergen, but I never was fortunate enough to see one, although very anxious to procure a skin, as I believe a specimen does not exist in any of the museums of Europe. c 34 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. fords nearly its own bulk of fine oil, amounting, I am told, sometimes to upward of a barrel. {Quaere, does Dr. De Jongh know any thing of Squalus Groenlandicus ?) This little vessel appeared to have been pretty successful, as her sides were quite white and silvery from the sharks being dragged against them ; and I confess the sight made us regret that my yacht's ground-tackle was neither long enough nor light enough to admit of our participating in the amuse- ment. When these men kill a shark, they have a curi- ous practice of inflating its stomach with a bellows and tying the gullet, in order to make the carcass float, as, if it sank to the bottom, all the other sharks would devote their attentions to their de- funct friend, to the neglect of the seal's blubber. About two A.M. on the 1st of July we passed Bear or Cherie Island, so called, I presume, on the lucus a non lucendo principle, because it certainly produces neither bears nor cherries at the present day. I believe the real reasons for its nomencla- ture are, that some of the early Dutch navigators, on their way to China, once saw a bear here, and that an English expedition, sent out by Alderman Cherie, of London, afterward erroneously fancied that they were the discoverers of the island, and tried to supplant its original name by that of their patron. There is said to be plenty of good coal cropping out of a precipice on the island. MEET THE ICE. 35 Although this was the third time that I have passed close by Bear Island, I had never yet actu- ally been able to see it, as it is generally shrouded by impenetrable mist. One can, however, always tell when you approach it by the enormous quanti- ties of gulls, puffins, guillemots, razor-bills, divers, etc., which use it as a sort of head-quarters and nursery, and afford to the mariner a perfect index to its* proximity. * The thermometer here fell to 36°, and a fresh gale of southwest wind sprang up, and carried us at the rate of eleven knots an hour until we sight- ed South Cape, the southernmost promontory of West Spitzbergen, at 1 A.M. on the 2d. We had been steering rather to the west, so as to keep clear during the gale of the heavy drift-ice which our pilot expected to be lying off the south- east of the island, and we now had to alter our course to nearly due east, so as to reach the ap- pointed rendezvous. We got there in the evening, and found the little harbor blocked up by heavy ice, which extended all along the coast. There was no appearance of the sloop, so we got out one of the boats and sent the pilot ashore with a letter, inclosed in a bottle, and addressed to Isaac the skyppar, saying we had been there, and would re- turn in a few days. * Bear Island is inaccurately laid down on the charts; its actual longitude being 19° east from Greenwich, and not 20° east, as the charts make it. 36 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. There are some old ruinous Russian huts on this promontory, one of which we made use of as a post- office by hanging the bottle up inside of it. It was very difficult to get the boat through the ice along shore, and the whole country was cover- ed with deep slushy snow ; we saw nothing ashore but a few Brent geese and Eider ducks. Sd. Thinking the sloop had not yet reached Spitzbergen, I determined to sail up the great gulf or sound called "Stour Fiord11 or "Wybe Jan's Water,11 to a place called "Thymen's Straits,11 about forty miles distant, in hopes of getting a few reindeer for provisions, as we were now subsisting on a bull, which, in the absence of any thing bet- ter, I had purchased in Hammerfest. Hitherto the fiord had appeared quite clear of ice, except a little about the shore, but on sailing about twenty miles north we sighted a long, low, white line of ice, extending like a wall apparently right across the fiord ; we thought at first that this was a sheet of fixed or "fast11 ice, but on approach- ing it we discovered that it was drift ice, mostly in small pieces, and very open. We saw two small vessels, which we made out to be a brig and a sloop, or "jagt,11 at some distance among the ice. Thinking the sloop might either be our own, or be able to give us some intelligence of her, we sent a boat on board during a calm. They knew nothing of our sloop, and reported an indifferent "fishing11 hitherto ; no vessel that they knew of had killed SEALS ON THE ICE. 37 more than thirty walruses; they themselves had twenty, with forty great seals and one bear ; they also informed us that the north coast of Spitz- bergen, which is usually considered the best hunt- ing-ground, was this year impracticable on account of large quantities of ice being jammed against the coast at the northwest promontory, called Hakluyt's Headland. On the 4th it was dead calm, and one of the most beautiful, bright, sunny days imaginable ; it even felt quite warm, although the thermometer was only 50° in the shade. We got a boat out, and rowed for about six hours among the ice, look- ing for seals, but only saw three, all of whom man- aged to save their blubber. On such a day as this, in these latitudes, one can see to immense distances with great distinctness, and hills which we know by reckoning and ob- servation to be forty or fifty miles off, appear to the eye as if they were not more than ten or twelve. This is, doubtless, owing to a very dry atmosphere, and also to the great flatness of the globe so near the pole permitting a much larger horizon to be visible. In the evening we had drifted close up to the brig before mentioned, and upoto hailing her I was pleased to find her the "Nordbye," of Tonsberg, the same brig I had met last summer among the Thousand Islands, and whose master had initiated me into the exciting sport of harpooning the wal- 38 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. rus. I recognized the portly form of Captain Er- icson — very like a "stour cobbe," or large seal himself — on the deck, and requested him to come on board to dinner, an invitation with which he promptly complied. The " Nordbye11 had left Tonsberg in the Christiania Fiord in February for the seal fishery in the great ice-field in the neighborhood of Jan Mayen's Island, and, having been unlucky there, had only lately come to Spitz- bergen as a dernier ressort, in hopes of making up a cargo ; she is an unwieldy tub of 200 tons, with five boats and twenty-four men, and is far too small for the northwestern fishery, as she is un- able to hoist or turn over a dead whale ; while, on the other hand, she is too big for the Spitzbergen seal and walrus fishery, as no one locality is gen- erally able to employ five boats at a time, and his crew are consequently only half employed. Ericson told us that the spring fishery at Jan Mayen's had been very unsuccessful and very disastrous ; many vessels had gone home "clean;11 several Scotch and Norwegian vessels had been much damaged, and two or three totally lost ; among others, the " Empress of India,11 a bran new iron screw whaler, from Peterhead, which had cost £20, 000, had gone down bodily, the cflfew escaping with difficulty into a Norwegian brig belonging to the same port and same owners as the "Nordbye.11 Ericson express- ed his decided conviction that iron vessels will "never do11 for the northern whale fishery, as the CAPTAIN ERICSON. 39 excessive cold renders the iron brittle, and concus- sions with the ice are apt to start the rivets. The "Nordbye" herself had undergone a terrible battering in that inclement season in those stormy seas, and had only captured about 300 small Jan Mayen seals, whereas 3000 would hardly have been remunerative. Poor Ericson was farther in great tribulation on account of having broken all his tel- escopes. The mate, a fine young fellow of twen- ty-two, only two days before had tumbled out of the " crowVnest" at the main - top - gallant - mast- head on to the deck, along with the last telescope, and had broken it to pieces. Upon farther inquiry, I ascertained that he had broken his own neck at the same time, and was picked up dead. To do my friend Ericson justice, I must acknowledge that he seemed to regret the loss of his poor young mate even more than that of the telescope, which he had accompanied in its descent, although the latter was quite invaluable and indispensable here, and not to be replaced nearer than Hammerfest for ten times its weight in gold. We had only three telescopes between us ; but, after a slight inward struggle, I prevailed upon myself to present one of them to Ericson, and I was happy to be able to render such an important service to so good and obliging a fellow. Before parting company, we went on board the "Nordbye" to see a young live walrus ("a leetle boy-walrus, " as Ericson in his broken English call- 40 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. ed it), which they had on board as a pet. This in- teresting little animal was about the size of a sheep, and was the most comical fac-simile imaginable of an old walrus. He had been taken alive after the harpooning of his mother a few weeks ago, and now seemed perfectly healthy, and tame and play- ful as a kitten. It was, of course, a great pet with all on board, and seemed much more intelligent than I could have believed ; the only thing which seemed to destroy its equanimity was pulling its whiskers, or pretending to use a "rope's end1'' to it, when it would sneak off, looking over its shoulder, just like a dog when chastised. They said it would eat salt fish, salt beef, blubber, or any thing offered it ; but I strongly advised Ericson to give it, if pos- sible, a mixture of vegetables or sea-weed along with such strong diet. I assured him that, if he succeeded in taking it alive to the Regent's Park or the Jardin des Plantes, he could get a long price for it ; but before I left Spitzbergen, in September, I heard with regret that the curious little beast had died. Ericson told me he did not think my yacht could penetrate to "Thymen's Straits11 at present, as a great deal of ice intervened, and more continued drifting through the straits from the eastward ; but as it looked tolerably open, I resolved to try. Upon penetrating a few miles in, however, we found it was impossible, and we therefore had to make up our minds to a continuance of the bull for the present. MEET OUR CONSORT. 41 We sailed down the fiord again on the 5th to look for our consort, or to see if she had left any letters for us at the post-office ; on nearing the Rus- sian huts we saw a small sloop, which hoisted the flag of Norway and Sweden, and which we soon made out to be the " Anna Louisa." She had been driven a good deal to the east during the gale on the 1st and 2d, and had not met with any great quantity of ice, except among the Thousand Isl- ands ; but several small vessels were hunting, or, as they call it, "fishing," to the eastward. Our men had only seen two walruses, but they had kill- ed four seals, and these formed the commencement of a cargo which afterward swelled to goodly pro- portions. Our people were of opinion that our best chance of sport lay to the northeast of the Thousand Isl- ands, where there are extensive submarine banks, much affected by the walrus ; but as we were very reluctant to exchange the comfortable cabins of the "Ginevra" for the narrow and odoriferous bunks of the "Anna Louisa," we decided on keeping in company as long as the ice would permit the for- mer to get through ; but, although we lowered the " GinevraV1 main-topsail, brailed up the foresail, and tacked up the mainsail, we had still some diffi- culty in keeping the yacht from running out of sight of her lubberly consort. On the 6th we found the ice getting too thick for the "Ginevra," so we agreed to abandon her 42 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. altogether, and to shift our flag into the "Anna Louisa" for good. We occupied about one half the day in transferring our guns, bedding, provisions, ammunition, etc., from the yacht to the sloop ; we also took with us the yacht's cook and Lord Da- vid's servant James, which made up a total of six- teen souls for the sloop, leaving ten in the yacht ; we took the two new walrus boats with us, and transferred the small old one to the yacht; we farther gave them a large cask, in which to stow the blubber of any seals they might get. I gave the sailing-master of the yacht instructions in writ- ing "to proceed to Bell Sound, and there to kill as many reindeer as possible ; if no reindeer were procurable, to cross again to Hammerfest for pro- visions, and in either case to be back without fail at the Russian huts on or before the 6th of Au- gust." I also instructed him to employ his per- sonal leisure in collecting and carefully labeling fossils and shells, and also small bags of gravel from different elevations, as well as some specimens of whales' bones and drift-wood from the highest elevations he could find them on. I appointed the mate to be maitre de chasse, and intrusted him with one of the Terry's rifles and a single-barreled shot-gun, with lots of powder, shot, caps, and cartridges ; we then parted company, and proceeded to make ourselves as comfortable as cir- cumstances would admit of on board the sloop. DESCRIPTION OF A WALRUS -BOAT. 43 CHAPTER III. Preparations. — Description of a Walrus-boat, and Implements used. — Harpoons. — Lances. — The Haak-pick, or Seal-hook. — Axes. — Knives. — Ice-anchors. — Compass. The crew are busy in shaping the rough white pine poles into oars, and shafts for the spears and harpoons, sharpening all the blades to a razor edge on a grindstone mounted on deck for the purpose, and otherwise fitting up the boats for immediate operations against the sea-horses. I may as well here proceed to give a general de- scription of the way in which this pursuit is con- ducted, as well as of the tackle and implements made use of, as it will enable the reader more clearly to understand my account of our own per- sonal experiences afterward. A well-constructed and well-appointed walrus- boat for five men is twenty-one feet long by five feet beam, having her main breadth about one third from the bow. She is bow-shaped at both ends, and should be at once strong, light, swift to row, and easily turned on her own centre ; this lat- ter quality is attained by having the keel a good deal depressed in the middle. She is always carvel-built, that construction of boat being much 44 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. less liable to damage from the ice and the tusks of the walruses than a clinker-built boat, as well as much easier to repair if actually damaged ; these boats have a very thick and strong stem-piece and stern-piece, to resist concussions with the ice. Each man rows with a pair of oars hung in grummets to stout single thole-pins: the steersman directs the boat by also rowing a pair of oars, but rowing with his face to the bow ; and as there are six thwarts, each thirty inches apart, he can, if necessary, sit and row like the others. This mode of steering a boat has great advantages over either a rudder or a single steering oar as used by the whalers, for it not only turns the boat much quicker than either, but it economizes the entire strength of a man in propelling the boat. The advantage of each man rowing a pair of oars is, that the boat can be turn- ed much quicker, and the oars, being short, are less in the way among ice. The harpooner always rows the bow oars, and is, of course, the command- er of the boat ; he alone uses the weapons and the telescope; the strongest man in the boat usually sits next to the harpooner, to hold and* haul in the line when a walrus is struck, and it is also his duty to hand the harpoons and lances to the harpooner as required. There is a deep notch cut in the centre of the stem-piece, and three others in a piece of hard wood on each side of it ; these are for the lines running through, and great care is requisite to prevent them THE WALRUS HARPOON. 45 from slipping farther aft on the gunwale than the notches, as if they do the boat will probably be up- set ; it is from this cause that most of the accidents that one occasionally hears of occur. There is sometimes also a "bollard,11 or little up- right post, in the bow of the boat, for making fast the lines to, but many harpooners prefer to dispense with this, using instead the foremost thwart of the boat. The boats are invariably painted white outside, in order to make their appearance assimilate as much as possible to that of the ice, and I think it would also be a great advantage to have the crews dressed in caps and jackets of some shiny white ma- terial, which would keep its color in spite of dirt and grease. Each boat is usually provided with six harpoon heads, fitting, three on each side, inside of the bow, into little racks covered with curtains of painted canvas to prevent their sharp points and edges from being blunted or accidentally wounding the men. These harpoons are used indifferently for the seal and the walrus, and are, with all their apparent simplicity, the most perfect weapon that can be con- trived for the purpose. "When the instrument is thrust into the animal and his struggles draw tight the line, the larger outer barb takes up, as it were, a loop of his gutta percha-like hid,e or the tough reticulated fibres containing his blubber, while the smaller inner barb, like that of a fish-hook, prevents 46 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. it from becoming disengaged. The best proof of its excellence is, that when a walrus is once prop- erly harpooned and the line tight, he very rarely es- capes. Each of these harpoon heads has grummet- ed round its neck one end of a line of twelve or fif- teen fathoms long, each line being neatly coiled up in a separate flat box under the front thwart, and the opposite end secured to some strong part of the boat inside. The lines do not require to be longer, because the walrus is not generally found in water more than fifteen fathoms deep, and even if the wa- ter should happen to exceed that depth, he is not able to drag the boat under, from inability to exert his full strength when subjected to the pressure of twelve or fifteen fathoms of water. The lines are made of two-inch tarred hemp rope, very soft laid, and should be of the very finest materials and best possible workmanship. There are generally four shafts for the harpoons, and it is not customary to keep more than one mounted, unless when walruses are actually in sight. They are made of white pine poles twelve or thir- teen feet long, planed down to about an inch and a half or an inch and a quarter in thickness, and are tapered to a point for about four inches at one end to make them fit into the sockets of the heads. After placing a harpoon on a shaft, it is fixed by striking the butt end of the shaft smartly against a little block of wood, which is fixed for the pur- pose between two of the timbers of the boat, about THE WHITEFISH HARPOON. 47 fifteen feet from the bow, and on the starboard side. The harpoons are used either for thrusting or darting, and a skillful harpooner will throw them with sufficient force to secure a walrus at four or five fathoms distance ; when possible, however, they are always thrust or stabbed into the animal, and in that case it is customary to give the weapon a twist or wrench, both for the purpose of withdraw- ing the shafts that it may not be lost or broken, as well as to entangle the barbs more securely in the walrus's skin or blubber. If this precaution is neg- lected, the harpoon may, perhaps, come out by the cut which it made on entering ; this is more likely to happen if the intended victim be lying with his skin slack. When there is much likelihood of falling in with white whales (Beluga or Balcena albicans), it is usu- al to carry one harpoon of a different construction, and with fifty fathoms of line attached, for their es- pecial benefit. The reason for requiring a different harpoon for these cetaceans is, that their skin is not, like that of a walrus, the toughest part of their body ; but the skin of Balcena albicans, on the con- trary, is quite tender, gristly, and gelatinous, and the barbed iron, therefore, requires to be driven in until it secures good holding in his flesh beneath the blubber. Next in the list of the boat's appurtenances come four or five enormous lances, with shafts as 48 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. "large as a weaver's beam," but as neither I my- self, nor probably my readers, have any notion of what a "weaver's beam" may be like, I will ex- plain that the shaft is a white pine pole nine feet long and one and a half inch thick at the handle, increasing upward to two and a half inches thick where it goes into the socket of the iron. Formi- dable as this weapon is, the iron shank is very fre- quently bent double, or the stout shaft snapped like a twig by the furious struggles of an impaled walrus ; so, to prevent the head being lost, it is at- tached to the shaft by a stout double thong of raw seal-skin, tied round the shank and nailed to the shaft for about three feet up. The reason for hav- ing the shaft so disproportionately large is, that there may be buoyancy enough to float the heavy iron spear if it should happen to fall into the wa- ter, or if a walrus, as often happens, should succeed in wrenching it out of the operator's hands by the violence of his contortions. I have once or twice had a boat's whole complement of lances rendered for the time unserviceable in the dispatching of a single walrus. The lances lie on the thwarts, with the blades protected in a box which is attached to the starboard end of tne harpooner's, or foremost one. The lance is not used for seals, as it is unneces- sary, and spoils the skins, so that the coup de grace is administered to them by the "haak-pick" being struck into the brain. Each boat should have five THE ICE-ANCHOR. 49 of these implements, which are also indispensable as boat-hooks for pushing and hooking when the ice is too thick to allow of the oars being used. There are then two axes, one a large one, used for decapitating the dead walruses, and the other, a small handy axe, which always lies close to the harpooner, is for cutting the line in case any thing goes wrong, or a walrus proves so fierce and mis- chievous that they may wish to be quit of him on any terms. Five or six large sharp knives are for stripping the skin and blubber off the animals, or "flensing'1 them, as it is called in the fisher's parlance. An ice-anchor is employed for anchoring the boat to an iceberg, and also to afford & fulcrum by which, with the help of two double-purchase blocks and twenty-four fathoms of rope (also forming part of every boat's appointments), five or even four men can drag the biggest walrus on to a moderately flat iceberg for the purpose of flensing him. A small compass is indispensable, and ought to be fitted into a box attached below the seat in front of the steersman, after the fashion of a billiard-table chalk-box. A telescope, a rifle, and plenty of ammunition, an iron bailing-ladle, also answering as a frying- pan, and a small copper kettle for making coffee. There is a locker in the fore-peak, and another in the after-peak of the boat, and in these there ought to be always stowed a hammer, a pair of nail nip- D 50 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. pers, a small bag of nails, a piece of sheet lead for patching the boat if a walrus should put his tusks through her bottom, a bag of spare bullets, a can- ister of powder and caps, spare grummets, a box of matches and brimstone, a canister of coffee, and twenty or thirty pounds of rye bread. A mast yard, and sail are taken if a stay of a few hours from the ship is contemplated; but a boat ought never to leave the ship's side without — or even to hang on the davits without — the whole of the other foregoing articles being inside of her ; because, if a boat leaves the ship, even if only to kill a seal a quarter of a mile off, you never can be certain that you will not be ten or twenty days absent — nay, you never can be certain that you will ever see the ship again! You get led on and on insensibly, in the excitement of the chase, from one seal or one troop of walruses to another, and the awful dense fogs or sudden gales of these regions may come on and pre- vent your finding your way back. In addition to all these absolute necessaries, we always had one luxury, consisting of a bag of mackintosh cloth lined with fur, and about seven feet by four, rolled into a tight bundle and strap- ped under the after thwart of each boat. This was to crawl into in case of being long out in severe weather; and, although we very seldom had occa- sion to make use of them, still the sense of comfort and security they gave one was very great, because I consider that they made one quite able to defy am- SEA-FOWL. 51 cold that can occur, even in the Arctic regions, in summer. As for provisions, I never felt any un- easiness on that score, as, even if a seal or a walrus could not be immediately obtained, there were al- ways plenty of eider ducks on the islands and out- lying skerries ; and the sea every where abounded with divers and guillemots, plenty enough and tame enough to be shot with a rifle. If a stay of many hours from the ship was contemplated, I generally took with me a shot-gun and a bag of shot for the purpose of killing fowls for food if necessary. 52 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. CHAPTER IV. Crow's-nest. — Look-out. — First Walrus seen. — Find them very shy. — Great Ice-pack. — Two Walruses shot. — Lay-to in a dense Fog. — Wreck of a Sloop in the Ice. — Cure for frost-bitten Feet. — Sketch of the Spitzbergen Walrus-hunt- er.—Profits of the Trade.— Truck System.— Cold.— Chil- blains.— Seal-shooting on the Ice. — Method of hunting the Great Seal. — Dimensions of Great Seal. — Seal-shooting in the Water. In a brig like Ericson's there is always a "crow's- nest1' (a contrivance in the shape of a cask, large enough for a man to get into, and made either of wood or canvas) fixed at the main-top-gallant-mast- head; but in a small vessel such as we had, the look-out man simply sits on the main gaff or the topsail yard. From our topsail yard, with a good telescope, we could see a single seal on white ice in a clear day about four miles off, and from a crow's- nest as high as Ericson's I believe about double that distance — a prodigious advantage for the lar- ger vessel. As may be supposed, it is rather a cold position than otherwise, that on the topsail yard, and the men, not unnaturally, are apt to neglect this all-important duty ; but, in sailing within sight of ice, a careful man, with a telescope, ought to be constantly there, because, if the ice is rough, even a large herd of walruses may be in sight one minute UNSUCCESSFUL AT FIRST. 53 and concealed by high intervening icebergs the next. The look-out man, of course, requires to be relieved very frequently. Shortly after parting with the yacht, our look- out man reported "walruses on the ice," and we had each several chances the same day; but the walruses were all old bulls, in small troops of two, three, or four, and so extremely shy that we could not get near enough to harpoon them, and we were advised by the people to refrain from firing at them, as they have a theory that it is almost impossible to shoot a walrus dead, and that it also frightens them and renders them wilder than ever. There is no doubt as to its making them wild ; but we soon found out that, when a walrus was wild already, the only chance of bringing him to bag was by fir- ing at his head. At first, however, we failed to do much execution, because, at the advice of the har- pooners, we waited until all chance of harpooning the walruses was at an end ; and then, when they were all scuffling pell-mell into the water, accurate shooting became next to impossible. Our want of success at first was also partly attributable to not understanding the anatomy of the animal, and hence imagining that his brain lay in what appears to be his head, but which is actually only the bony process supporting the tusks ; the brain, in reality, lies far back, and the back part of the head is com- pletely buried in the folds of fat or blubber sur- rounding the neck. 54 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. On the 7th the weather continued foggy, with a cold northeast wind, and we made very little prog- ress against it. We are coasting along the outside of this great ice-pack, which fills up Deeva Bay, and embraces the whole archipelago of the Thousand Islands. This, the east side of the pack, has its edge clear and well-defined, being packed tight by the joint influence of the northeast wind lately prevail- ing and the current, which always sets more or less in the same direction. When going in pursuit of the walruses among the ice, it is sometimes very difficult to get the boats through the ice at the out- er edge of the pack, where it is so closely wedged together, and we generally have to drag them over the ice with great labor for fifty or sixty yards, un- til we get into opener water inside the pack. This morning Lord David shot a cow walrus through the head as she was shuffling off the ice. She im- mediately sank, but floated up again in a few sec- onds, when she was harpooned and secured. In the afternoon I went after another cow, which, /ith two half-grown young ones, lay apparently asleep on a small outlying patch of icebergs. As usual, we got almost near enough to harpoon them, when the old one got alert, and immediately aroused the two young ones, and, as they seemed unwilling to move, she rolled them one after the other like barrels into the water, and was in the act of follow- ing them herself, when my rifle bullet penetrated her brain, and she tumbled head foremost off the LAY-TO IN A FOG. 55 iceberg, and instantly sank to appear no more. The two young ones came up again and again, as if look- ing for their dam, but would not allow us to ap- proach them. The people say that the walruses about this part must have been very much hunted, as they are so shy ; but they encourage us by saying that, when we get farther to the northeast, we shall find plenty of more unsophisticated individuals, who will allow themselves to be harpooned. On the morning of the 8th we got past the end of the pack, and got a glimpse through the thick fog of " Black Point," a gloomy promontory, form- ing the southeast corner of Edge's Land, as this di- vision of Spitzbergen is called. Nothing was visi- ble ashore but snow, with desolate-looking patches of bare brown earth peeping through it here and there, or the bare rocks on some "wind-loved11 peak from which the snow had been blown. About midday the fog got thicker, and we found ourselves running in among some heavy icebergs ; so, as we did not know what the ice ahead might be like, our prudent skyppar judged it advisable to lay-to and wait for clearer weather. The greater part of the eastern coast of Spitz- bergen is covered with a succession of enormous glaciers, descending down to the water's edge, and even protruding far into it. I imagine that these prodigious masses of ice generate the fogs, which it is notorious are much more prevalent here than on the west side of the country. 56 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. 9th. The fog is not quite so thick, but a very cold wind is blowing from the northeast, and the thermometer on deck is just above freezing-point. In such weather seals and walruses do not lie on the ice, nor show more than their heads above wa- ter occasionally, as if to inquire if the weather above was getting any more favorable for basking. We pretty much imitate these sensible amphibia in our habits, as we don't show much on deck. In the afternoon a small sloop came in sight, and appeared desirous of speaking us, so we hove- to for them. The captain of the sloop then came on board in a boat, and, touching his cap to us, he began a dismal story, which my slight knowledge of Norsk did not enable me to follow, so we had it translated to us by one of our crew, who, from hav- ing sailed in an American ship to San Francisco, could speak tolerable English, or rather American. It appeared that about three weeks ago another small sloop, with a crew of six men, had been to- tally lost among the ice near Hope Island. The crew had taken to their boat, and had been rowing and drifting about, looking for another vessel, until yesterday, when this sloop had picked them up. They were in the last extremity from cold and hunger, having had nothing to eat for several days past but the dry seal-skin mumings of their oars — two of them, who were in this boat, looked very thin and pale. The worst of the story was that the captain of the wrecked vessel had got both his FROST-BITTEN FEET CURE SUGGESTED. 57 feet badly frost-bitten, and the object of this other skyppar in now visiting us was to ask if we were going over to Hammerfest soon, that we might take the poor man with us, or if we had any medicine with us which would cure him. We had no medi- cine but a box of pills and one of Seidlitz powders, and doubting the efficacy of these in a case of mor- tification, I recommended them to take the man over to Norway immediately, or else to amputate the frost-bitten parts of his feet without farther delay. The master of the sloop replied that he and his crew could not afford to sacrifice their summer's profits by leaving the ice with their ves- sel only half full, and were afraid to take upon themselves the responsibility of performing the amputation. I then told them them that, as we had just come out, and had already the same num- ber of souls on board our smaller vessel as they had, with the addition of the six castaways, we did not feel that it was incumbent upon us either to go over to Norway or to relieve them of the charge of any of the men. I remembered hearing long ago, in the case of a friend who had shot his arm off, that bandages wet with port wine were applied to keep off mortification, and so, as the nearest ap- proach to that stimulant in our possession, we gave them a coUple of bottles of rum, and advised them to apply that either externally or internally, as they might deem most advisable. We heard a few days afterward that by great 58 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. good luck they had fallen in with a small schooner belonging to the same owners as the wrecked sloop, and that this schooner, having her cargo nearly com- pleted, had taken the six men over to Hammer- fest ; and I afterward ascertained, upon our return to Norway, that the poor captain's life had been saved, but by the terrible alternative of amputating the greater part of both his feet. It is a terribly hard and dangerous life these Spitzbergen walrus-hunters live, and I observe that they all have a restless, weary look about the eyes — a look as if contracted by being perpetually in the presence of danger. They are a wild, rough, reckless lot of fellows ; bold, hardy, and enduring of cold, hunger, and fatigue ; active and energetic while at sea., and nearly always drunk while at home. So many bad accidents have been caused by their having brandy on board, that of late the owners have supplied them with tea and coffee in- stead, and it is found that men work quite as well, and stand the climate quite as well, upon these as upon spirits ; but this enforced temperance seems to cause a sort of reaction whenever they get .the opportunity of indulging to excess. Of late years the merchants of Tromsoe and Hammerfest, who fit out these vessels, have adopt- ed the sagacious system of paying their crews by a share of the proceeds in lieu of money wages, and this, of course, is a very great stimulus to the men to work hard and to lose no opportunity of killing walrus-hunters' profits. 59 every walrus and seal that they possibly can. The usual system I believe to be as follows : The own- ers fit out and provision the vessel, and advance to the men on credit what money they require to buy clothing and to provide necessaries for their fami- lies during their absence: whatever the cargo ob- tained may consist of, one third of the gross pro- ceeds is then set apart for the crew, and divided into shares, of which the captain gets three, each harpooner two, ancf the other men one each. Thus, if the gross proceeds of a voyage in skins, blubber, and ivory be estimated at $2000, and the number of hands amounts to ten, which is the usual num- ber for a vessel with two boats, the shares will be worth $47£, or about £10 each ; £10 is a much more important sum of money in Norway than it is in Britain ; and so (putting aside the exciting nature of the occupation) it is not suprising that the best seamen and boldest spirits of the north of Norway should be generally found in the Spitz- bergen sealers. These are the true descendants and successors of the gallant Vikings and Berserk- ars, who of old ravaged and conquered the coasts of Europe from Jutland to Otranto. This pursuit to these men has all the excitement of a lottery, because, in the case of a very successful season, they may make a good deal more than the above- stated amounts, and I dare say a good deal of the spirit of the gambler enters into their calculations. They are always over head and ears in debt to the CO ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. merchants before they start, and so I believe it is usual for the owners to compound with the crew for the third of the cargo belonging to them by giving them a certain sum per walrus and per seal whenever they arrive, and as the poor ignorant men know nothing of the price-current of seal-oil, etc., in the markets of Hamburg or Bremen, and are naturally anxious to "realize" at once, I am afraid they are generally induced or intimidated into parting with their share of the hard-earned spoil at far below its market value. In fact, the "truck system" in all its iniquity prevails. Our own crew, having been engaged so late in the summer as to render it unlikely that we should be able to get a full cargo, and also with the view of rendering them more entirely dependent on our wishes, were not engaged on this system, but got in- stead money wages at double the rate usual in Nor- way. This double pay was about equal in amount to that of the English sailors in my yacht. I shot a large seal in the evening. 10th, Sunday. Thick, cold, raw fog all day; ropes all incrusted with ice, which falls down clattering on the deck every time any thing shakes. I begin to suffer a good deal from chilblains on the feet, an ailment I have not been addicted to since I was a schoolboy, cetat. eleven. This is perhaps not alto- gether to be wondered at, as the thermometer in our cabin ranges between 36° and 44°, and we sit in our fur great-coats and fur boots in order to avoid SEAL SHOT. 61 having the stove lighted, for we both think that in such a small confined place any cold is preferable to the heat and unwholesome closeness of a stove. The 11th was just such another day, and we did not see twenty yards from the deck all day. In the evening a big seal was observed looming through the fog, and looking as large as a walrus in the haze. Lord David shot him dead. When a sin- gle animal is observed from the ship, we take it in turns to go after him, and as we always sleep in our clothes, we are ready at a moment's notice, at any hour of the day or night, whenever the watch on deck report any thing in sight. Our crew are di- vided into three watches of four hours each, but all hands are summoned on deck whenever a herd of walruses is seen, and, in case of both boats leaving the vessel, Isaac the skyppar and the ship's cook take charge on deck. Isaac himself is a renowned harpooner, and a first-rate man altogether, but, un- fortunately, he broke his left arm a few weeks be- fore we sailed, so that he is unable to use the oar or the harpoon as yet. He makes a most excellent and careful ship-keeper, and we never have any un- easiness about being lost while we know that he is on deck. It must be rather dull work for him, be- ing on deck alone for whole days, with the topsail aback, while the boats are miles out of sight in the ice. We have ordered him to hoist the flag if he should see a bear or a herd of walruses while we are absent, as, although the boats may not be visi- 62 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. ble from the deck, we can generally, as long as it is clear, see the sails of the sloop above the horizon. It cleared up about midnight for a brief interval, and enabled us to get a beautiful view of the coast, with its enormous glaciers sweeping out into the sea in great semicircular arcs. There was plenty of ice all round, but in very open order. Ryk Yse Islands were visible to the north, among much heavy ice, which seemed to be fixed around them. We saw a small sloop several miles distant, and a large seal asleep on an iceberg, about equidistant from the other sloop and ourselves. Lord David went in pursuit of it ; but we perceived from the deck that the steersman had lost the bearings of the seal, and was steering in a wrong direction. For fear the other sloop should be before us, we then hastily lowered my boat and rowed straight to the seal. On nearing the phoca, he appeared quite awake, and was looking nervously about him every two or three minutes, so we rowed round so as to get between him and the sun, which, although it was exactly midnight, was high and bright in the heavens. This dazzled his eyes so completely, that, although he was wide awake, and looked straight in our direction repeatedly, he could see nothing for the glare, and he lay still until the boat approach- ed to within about fifty yards, when my bullet per- forated his cerebellum, and he sank motionless on the ice. The' pursuit of the great Spitsbergen seal (P: PHOCA BARBATA. 63 barbata), although it lacks the wild excitement of the chase of the sea-horse, is a very delightful amuse- ment. The great seal will never allow himself to be "caught napping." I do not think I ever saw a sleeping seal which did not, about once in every three or four minutes, raise his head from the ice and look uneasily around ; so that he can not be harpooned in his sleep, like his more lethargic con- gener the walrus. I imagine this greater watch- fulness on the part of the seals to arise from the greater cause they have to apprehend being " stalk- ed" by the bears while taking their siesta ; howev- er this may be, recourse must be had to the rifle be- fore the harpoon comes into play in the case of Phoca barbata, and to make good work with them requires the perfection of rifle-practice, for if a seal be not shot stone dead on the ice, he is almost cer- tain to roll or jerk himself into the water, and sink or escape ; and as a seal never lies more than twelve inches from the edge of the ice, the most trifling spark of life is enough. The only part of the huge carcass in which a bullet will cause the requisite amount of "sudden death" is the brain, and this, in the biggest seal, is not larger than an orange. A seal will seldom allow the boat to approach nearer than fifty or sixty yards, and a large propor- tion take the alarm much sooner. Every rifle vol- unteer and every gunmakers apprentice who reads this will probably exclaim, " Oh, there is no diffi* culty in that; I can hit an orange every shot at G4 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. 100 yards \V This may be true, my gallant volun- teer or skillful gunmaker, but you have not yet taken into account that the boat is heaving more or less from the motion of the waves, and that the slab of ice on which your orange is lying is heaving also ; and this, upon consideration^ you will admit increases the " difficulty" a little ; neither Lord Da- vid Kennedy nor myself were altogether tyros in the use of the rifle before we began, but we found the difficulty considerable ; however, after a few days we became adepts at it, and rarely missed kill- ing a seal dead. The rifles we both used were el- liptical, four-barreled Lancaster's of 40-gauge. Dur- ing the last 100 or 150 yards of the boat's approach to the seal, the steersman alone propels it by gently paddling it with two pars, one eye on the seal and the other on his oars ; if the seal looks in the direc- tion of the boat, he stops rowing, and great care is requisite on his part to avoid coming against pieces of ice, which make a rasping noise, almost sure to attract the attention of the seal. I need hardly ob- serve that the boat must also keep carefully to lee- ward, as the seal has an acute sense of smell ; and if the advantage of the sun can be obtained in ad- dition, as in the case above related, the moments of Phoca barbata are probably numbered. I always knelt in the bow of the boat, and selected my own opportunity to fire, and, the moment the rifle was discharged, all the men rowed with their utmost strength to the spot, where, if the seal showed any SIZE OF PHOCA BARB ATA. G5 symptoms of life, I always darted a harpoon into him; but, if he seemed quite dead, some one jumped out and struck the haak-pick into his head, and dragged him away from the edge for fear he should come alive again. This is not an unnecessary pre- caution, as 1 have known a seal, apparently stone dead, give a convulsive kick over the brink of the ice, and go to the bottom like a sixty-eight pound shot, while his proprietors, as they delusively con- sidered themselves, were standing within two feet of him. When the seal is fairly dead, all the men except one get on the ice, and with their knives they strip the skin and blubber, in one sheet, off his body in a very few minutes. The carcass, or " krop," is then thrown into the sea, that it may not be mistaken for a live seal at a distance ; the blubber is laid flat in the bottom of the boat, and you proceed in quest of more or return to the ship. A full-sized Spitzbergen seal, in good condition, is about nine and a half or ten feet long, by six or six and a half feet in circumference, and weighs six hundred pounds or upward. The skin and fat amount to about one half the total weight. The blubber lies in one layer of two or three inches thick underneath the skin, and yields about one half of its own weight of fine oil. The value of a seal of course varies with the state of the oil mar- ket all over the world ; but, at the time of which I write, oil being unusually cheap, they only averaged E 66 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. about five or six dollars apiece; but still the fact of the animals being of some use contributed to ren- der the chase of them much more exciting, as noth- ing can be more distasteful or unsatisfactory to the feelings of a true sportsman than taking the life of any thing which is to be of no use when dead. When seals are in the water they are not the least afraid of a boat, but come boldly up quite close to it, first on one side and then on the other, as if im- pressed with the deepest curiosity to see what the unusual-looking object is. When they are shot dead in the water, however, they sink so rapidly that it is very difficult to get possession of them. The most approved plan is not to fire unless the boat's head is directed toward the seal and distant not more than thirty yards ; then, if the men all give way instantly and vigorously, you may be in time to thrust or dart the harpoon into the seal before he sinks, but more likely you will only be in time to see him sinking far down in the clear water with his tail downward. Some people compute that " one half of the seals shot in the water, even with skillful management, are lost;" others say "two thirds ;" and, from our own experience, I am in- clined to think it is two to one on the seal, or there- abouts. I have several times lost six consecutive- ly, and a most tantalizing proceeding it was ; but, bad luck as that may seem, it is nothing ; for our head harpooner, Christian, a very smart fellow, told me that one day he shot dead eighteen immense SHOOTING SEALS IN THE WATER. 67 seals, and lost every one of them ! If you merely wound a seal in the water, there is a much better chance of getting him than if he is killed outright, as he sometimes flounders on the surface till he is harpooned. I have often thought that it would answer to use small shot when they come so close, and I regret never having made the experiment. 68 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. CHAPTER V. Hunting the Walrus. — Windfall. — Maternal Affection of Wal- rus.— Seal's Dinner. — Molluscse. — Whale's Food. — Herd of Walruses. — Four killed. — Escape of a fine Bull. — Cutting up the Blubber. — Walrus Hide and Blubber. — Accommoda' tions of "Anna Louisa." — "Whittling" a great Resource.1 — Vast Herds of Sea-horses. — "Jaging" them. — Exciting Sport. — Man killed by a Walrus. — Spitzbergen Gazette of June 16th. — Walrus Veal or Foal. The fog was as thick as ever again on the morn- ing of the 12th, and we were tantalized by hearing the snorting and bellowing of a great many wal- ruses in the immediate vicinity, although we could not find them for the fog ; but it fortunately clear- ed up for a little in the forenoon, and enabled us to see a great herd of walruses reposing on several large flat slabs of ice. We instantly went after them in both boats, and, although they were very shy, we each succeeded in killing a cow and a call! The cow killed from my boat had a good harpoon and line sticking in her back ; it had not been long in the walrus, and appeared to have been lost by the slipping of the knot at the inner end of the line. According to the laws of the ice, both walrus and tackle — even if the former had been dead — were a fair prize of the captors, although Christian said MATERNAL AFFECTION OF WALRUS. 69 he knew very well to whom the harpoon had be- longed. I never in my life witnessed any thing more in- teresting and more affecting than the wonderful maternal affection displayed by this poor walrus. After she was fast to the harpoon and was dragging the boat furiously among the icebergs, I was going to shoot her through the head that we might have time to follow the others ; but Christian called to me not to shoot, as she had a "junger" with her. Although I did not understand his object, I re- served my fire, and upon looking closely at the walrus when she came up to breathe, I then per- ceived that she held a very young calf under her right arm, and I saw that he wanted to harpoon it ; but whenever he poised the weapon to throw, the old cow seemed to watch the direction of it, and interposed her own body, and she seemed to receive with pleasure several harpoons which were intend- ed for the young one. At last a well-aimed dart struck the calf, and we then shortened up the lines attached to the cow and finished her with the lances. Christian now had time and breath to ex- plain to me why he was so anxious to secure the calf, and he proceeded to give me a practical illus- tration of his meaning by gently "stirring up11 the unfortunate junger with the butt end of a harpoon shaft. This caused the poor little animal ro emit a peculiar, plaintive, grunting cry, eminently express- ive of alarm and of a desire for assistance, and 70 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. Christian said it would bring all the herd round about the boat immediately. Unfortunately, how- ever, we had been so long in getting hold of our poor little decoy duck that the others had all gone out of hearing, and they abandoned their young relative to his fate, which quickly overtook him in the shape of a lance thrust from the remorseless Christian. I don't think I shall ever forget the faces of the old walrus and her calf as they looked back at the boat ! The countenance of the young one, so ex- pressive of abject terror, and yet of confidence in its mother's power of protecting it, as it swam along under her wing ; and the old cow's face showing such reckless defiance for all that we could do to herself, and yet such terrible anxiety as to the safety of her calf! This plan of getting hold of a junger and making him grunt to attract the others is a well-known "dodge11 among the hunters ; and, although it was not rewarded on this occasion, I have several times seen it meet with the full measure of success due to its humanity and ingenuity. I opened the stomach of a seal of aldermanic proportions, who looked as if he had lately been' attending a civic feast, and found in it, not turtle, but about a bushel of beautiful prawns, evidently just swallowed, and so fresh that we might have re-eaten them ourselves but for an unworthy preju- dice. How animal life must swarm in these cold CLIO BOREALIS. 71 seas to maintain such a multitude of voracious an- imals ! The keeper of the "Talking Seal" in Lon- don told me that they "gave her fifty pounds of fish a day, and that she would eat one hundred pounds if she could get it;11 so we can form some idea of what the thousands of seals here must de- vour. The basis of all this gormandizing is un- doubtedly the Medusa? or Jelly-fish, which in places are so numerous as actually to thicken and discolor the sea ! Conspicuous among these are the small black animalculce, popularly known to the Nor- wegian frequenters of these regions as " Hval- spise" or "Whales' food" (Clio borealis). This singular mollusk may be briefly described as nearly resembling the body of a tadpole, but in- stead of the tail of the latter it is provided with a pair of wings like those of a bird, with which it propels itself through the water by a sort of flying motion. The sea is literally blackened in some places by the swarms of these animalculae to such an extent that I have no difficulty in believing that the huge Mysticetus, witli his enormous open mouth and whalebone brushes, may ingulf a suf- ficiency of them to maintain him. I collected a lot of these winged tadpoles, intending to preserve them in spirits of wine, but somehow that fluid re- duced them in a few days to a sort of opaque pulpy mass. While they were waiting in a tumbler for a pickle-bottle to be cleaned and filled with spirits of wine for their reception, they fought furiously 72 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. in a sort of indiscriminate melee among themselves, and were more particularly virulent against a small pink Jelly-fish which I put into the tumbler beside them. 13th. At 3 A.M. this morning we were aroused by the cheering cry of "Hvalruus paa Ysen" (wal- ruses on the ice). We both got up immediately, and from the deck a curious and exciting spectacle met our admiring gaze. Four large flat icebergs were so densely packed with walruses that they were sunk almost awash with the water, and had the appearance of being solid islands of walrus I The monsters lay with their heads reclining on one another's backs and sterns, just as I have seen rhinoceroses lying asleep in the African forests ; or, to use a more familiar simile, like a lot of fat hogs in a British straw-yard. I should think there were about eighty or one hundred on the ice, and many more swam grunting and spouting around, and tried to clamber up among their friends, who, like surly people in a full omnibus, grunted at them angrily, as if to say, "Confound you, don"t you see that we are full?11 There were plenty more good flat icebergs about, but they always seem to like being packed as closely as possible for mutual warmth. These four islands were several hundred yards apart, and, after feasting our eyes for a little on the glorious sight, we resolved to take them in succession, and not to fire at first ; but the walruses had not been long enough on the ice to have got LOSE A FINE BULL. 75 properly sleepy, and the discontented individuals in the water gave the rest the alarm, so that we only managed to secure four altogether. Solomon, our Untried harpooner, acquitted him- self pretty tolerably on this his first fair trial, for he killed one out of the first herd, and two at a time out of the second, but on the latter occasion he as nearly as possible upset the boat by allowing one of the lines to run over the gunwale aft of the notches at the bow : the boat most certainly would have been upset had it not been that it was bal- lasted with the blubber of the one already killed ; as it was, she was half filled with water, and Lord David and the crew were on the point of jumping out, when fortunately she righted again. This herd consisted chiefly of cows and young bulls, and they then dispersed or got out of reach among the ice. In the forenoon we discovered a huge bull, with fine tusks, by himself sound asleep on a small slop- ing piece of ice, and I went in Solomon's boat to attack him. The shape of the iceberg would not permit us to approach within stabbing distance of the bull, but as he was not more than five yards from the bow of the boat, I very foolishly did not fire, as I considered the harpoon a certainty ; but, to my utter disgust and astonishment, Solomon threw two harpoons one after the other, and missed the huge animal with both ; the walrus awoke at the sound the second harpoon made on the ice, and 76 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. was into the sea like a shot. The rest of the boat's crew were as much annoyed as myself, and anathematized the unhappy Solomon in every lan- guage spoken in Scandinavia. I believe I added some strongish expressions in English. We made up our minds to disrate Solomon if this occurs again, and to try another of the crew as harpooner instead of him. l 173 CHAPTER XII. Walruses leave the Banks and go upon Land. — Vast Herds ashore. — Frightful Massacre. — Just Retribution. — Cargo of Bones. — Beautiful Day and sudden Change. — Early north- ern Voyagers. — Scoresby's Opinion. — Open Polar Basin a mere Chimera. — Dr. Kane. — North Pole. — Scheme for reach- ing the Pole. — Parry's Sledge Expedition, and why it failed. — Alexei Markhoflfs Expedition, and his difficult Return. The 14th was Sunday, and continued foggy, but looked a little more promising; and accordingly, on the 15th, it had cleared away, and we had a fine day, with northwesterly wind. We were both out in the boats all day, and brought in one walrus and seventeen seals. During the fog of last week we had been appre- hensive that there were few or no walruses remain- ing in this neighborhood, as we had heard no bel- lowing ; and if there had been any walruses around we could not have failed to hear them, as the weath- er was mild, and there was plenty of good ice. This day's proceedings completely proved that our ap- prehensions were well founded ; for, except the one we killed (and who had been badly wounded b}7 some one else), we did not see a walrus either on ice or in the water. Several other small vessels which were in sight bore up for the south in the evening, as if they had 174 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. made the same discovery ; and our people say that all the walruses "must have gone on land now,1' and that the best chance is to look for them among the Thousand Islands ; but it seems to us that among so many islands, and so many hundred miles of rugged shores, we stand but a bad chance of find- ing them with our slow-sailing vessel. About this time of year the walruses usually con- gregate together in vast herds, sometimes to the number of several thousands, and all lie down in a mass in some secluded bay or some rocky island, and there they remain, in a semi -torpid sort of state, for weeks together, without moving or feed- ing. They do not usually do this until near the end of August, by which time most of the vessels have departed full, and of course it is a very great chance whether any of those remaining will find these trysting-places in the few days which remain before the season breaks up ; but such chances are what every Spitzbergen walrus-hunter prays for by day and dreams of by night, because they know that if they are fortunate enough to find the wal- ruses under these circumstances, they may be ena- bled to kill a small fortuneVworth of them in a few hours. I never saw a walrus on terra firma myself, but I know that frequently on these occasions, even of late years, prodigious numbers of them have been slaughtered by the lucky finders. At the close of my first visit to Spitzbergen, in FRIGHTFUL MASSACRE. 175 the'end of August, 1858, 1 visited a small island, which I think is the south westernmost of the Thou- sand Islands, for the purpose of inspecting the scene of the latest important massacre of this sort which . had taken place, and the details of which were aft- erward related to me by one of the perpetrators. They are*as follows : It seems that this island had long been a very celebrated place for walruses going ashore, and great numbers had been killed upon it at different times in by-gone years. In August, 1852, two small sloops sailing in company approached the island, and soon discovered a herd of walruses, numbering, as they calculated, from three to four thousand, reposing upon it. Four boats' crews, or sixteen men, pro- ceeded to the attack with spears. One great mass of the walruses lay in a small, sandy bay, with rocks inclosing it on each side, and on a little mossy flat above the bay, but to which the bay formed the only convenient access for such unwieldy animals. A great many hundreds lay on other parts of the island at a little distance. The boats landed a little way off, so as not to frighten them, and the sixteen men, creeping along shore, got between the sea and the bay full of walruses before mentioned, and immediately com- menced stabbing the animals next them. The wal- rus, although so active and fierce in the water, is very unwieldy and helpless on shore, and those in front soon succumbed to the lances of their assail- 176 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. ants ; the passage to the shore soon got so blocked up with the dead and the dying that the unfortu- nate wretches behind could not pass over, and were in a manner barricaded by a wall of carcasses. Con- sidering that every thrust of a lance was worth twenty dollars, the scene must have been one of terrific excitement to men who had very few or no dollars at all; and my informant's eyes sparkled as he related it. He said the walruses were then at their mercy, and they slew, and stabbed, and slaughtered, and butchered, and murdered until most of their lances were rendered useless, and themselves were drenched with blood and exhaust- ed with fatigue. They went on board their vessels, ground their lances, and had their dinners, and then returned to their sanguinary work ; nor did they cry "Hold, enough!11 until they had killed nine hundred walruses ; and yet so fearless or so lethar- gic were the animals, that many hundreds more re- mained sluggishly lying on other parts of the island at no great distance. Their two small sloops, already partially loaded, could only carry away a small portion of the spoil, but they trusted to being able to return from Ham- merfest with other vessels to convey away the re- mainder. The result, however, was a very striking illustration of the truth of the adage, "IShomme propose, et Dieu dispose ;" for on their return they were most justly punished for their wasteful and wanton slaughter of these useful animals by find- ASPECT OF THE FIELD OF BATTLE. 177 ing the island surrounded by many miles of heavy and impenetrable drift-ice, which baffled all their attempts to get at their walruses. In their hurry they had not even extracted all the tusks, which thenceforth became any body's property; and Daniel Danielsen told me he hap- pened to be one of the first to revisit the island the ensuing season, and that he cut out about a hund- red pairs of tusks. The skins and blubber, of course, were quite useless by that time, and thus six or seven hundred walruses were destroyed with- out benefit to any body. When I visited this island six years afterward, there still remained abundant testimony to cor- roborate the entire truth of the story. The smell of the island was perceptible at several miles' dis- tance, and on landing we found the carcasses lying as I have described them, and in one place two and three deep. The skin and flesh of many remained tolerably entire, notwithstanding the ravages of bears, foxes, and gulls. So many walruses have been killed on this island at different times, that a ship might easily load with bones there, and it grieved me, as an agriculturist, to see the materi- als of so much excellent bone-dust lying unappro- priated. I believe the walruses have since discontinued their visits to the island — probably on account of the overpowering smell of the remains of their slaughtered kindred. M 178 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. The morning of the 16th was beautifully bright and clear, but the game have so completely desert- ed this part of the coast that we only got two seals and one walrus all day. Kennedy brought in a load of fire-wood, and some limestone boulders containing fossils from Ryk Yse Island. Nothing can exceed the sublime grandeur of a really fine day in these regions : the sea as calm and bright as a mirror, and covered with countless floating icebergs of a dazzling whiteness, and of all imaginable sizes and shapes ; no sound to be heard but the terrific peals of thunder caused by the cracking of the glaciers, the hoarse bellowing of the walruses, and the screams and croaks of the gulls and divers. All this makes up such a scene, that no man who has once beheld it can ever forget it. Alas ! that there should be a reverse to this beautiful medal, but often ten minutes suffice to change the face of every thing entirely : a chilling blast of wind comes from the eternal ice-fields to the northeast ; thick fog, and probably snow, follow immediately ; the brilliant sugary-looking glaciers are hidden, and nothing remains of the glorious panorama of sea, and ice, and hills, and glaciers, but a dim, and cold, and misty circle of an acre in extent around the boat Such a day, with such a termination, was the 16th, and we were late before we could find our way back to the sloop. OPEN POLAR BASIN A MERE CHIMERA. 179 17th. The other vessels have now all gone south- ward, and most of them have gone home altogeth- er, so that I believe we are now farther to the north than any human beings in the world, although only in latitude 78°.* There is lots of heavy ice coming down, and we reluctantly make up our minds to fall back to the Thousand Islands. The extreme north to which the outlying sker- ries to the north of Spitzbergen reach is about 81°, and very few people have ever succeeded in pene- trating to a higher latitude than that, as it is now pretty generally believed that the accounts some of the early Dutch navigators give of having sailed to 83° or 84° are either apocryphal, or founded upon erroneous observations. Scoresby,who seems to have been one of the most accurate and painstaking observers, and a thorough- ly practical as well as scientific seaman, who had spent his life in the Polar seas, admits never hav- ing been farther north than 81° 30' ; and I believe with him that this is about the closest authentica- ted approximation which ever has been made, or which ever will be made, toward the pole by water. From much reading on the subject, and much conversation with intelligent practical men, well ac- quainted with those seas, as well as from my own little opportunities of observation during my two visits to Spitzbergen, I may be permitted to express my thorough conviction that all idea of a great * We afterward reached 79°, inside of Stour Fiord. 180 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. open sea around the pole is entirely chimerical, and that nothing exists within a radius of six hundred miles of the pole but vast masses of eternal and im- penetrable ice, unless, indeed, there may happen to be land intervening. I am aware that the distinguished Dr. Kane held very strongly an opposite opinion ; but the argu- ments in his book do not seem to me to be of the slightest avail against the overwhelming amount of evidence in a contrary direction. Hopelessly impossible as all attempts to sail to the pole must ever continue to be, I think, if there were sufficient inducements to undertake the at- tempt, that it is possible enough to do it by land, or, to speak more correctly, by ice. The distance from the extreme north of Spitz- bergen would be 600 miles ; and the only way in which I conceive the attempt could be made with any chance of success would be for a well-provided vessel, with sledges and plenty of good dogs to draw them, to go to Spitzbergen in summer, select a shel- tered harbor as far to the north as they could get, and pass the remainder of the fine weather in kill- ing a quantity of reindeer and wild-fowl for provis- ions for themselves, and seals and walruses to keep the dogs fat and in good condition. Good hunters would have little difficulty in laying in a hundred tons of deer, seals, and walruses in two months. It would be necessary, of course, to winter in Spitzbergen, but that would be no worse than win- SIR EDWARD PARRY'S ATTEMPT. 181 tering in other parts of the Arctic regions, and plenty of hardy volunteers could be got in Trom- soe and Hammerfest to act as hunters and harpoon- ers to the expedition. The dogs would require to be brought from Greenland or Siberia, with men who understood the management of them. During the early spring the party would have to exercise their teams, and to get them into as thor- ough a state of condition and discipline as possible, and, if practicable, they should lay out some depots of provisions as far as they could on their intended route to the north. If they then were to take ad- vantage of the first available fine weather in March or April to start to the north in well-appointed dog-sledges, I entertain very little doubt they could reach the pole and regain their ship within a month or six weeks from the date of their departure, and that without undergoing any hardships or priva- tions exceeding those inevitable to Arctic explor- ing expeditions. The fourth expedition of Sir Edward Parry, in 1827, was sent out with a view of trying to reach the pole by sledge-traveling ; but^ as is well known, it failed, because they did not winter in Spitzber- gen, and they were consequently unable to take to their sledge-boats until the 22d of June, a period at least two months too late, and when the midsum- mer's sun had loosened and softened the ice, and rendered it utterly unfit for sledge-traveling. Par- ry's sledges were, farther, drawn by seamen instead 182 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. of dogs, and the pace at which men can drag a heavy sledge is so slow that they can not convey a suffi- ciency of fuel and provisions for a long journey, and Parry's men were consequently upon short al- lowance from the commencement of their arduous labors. In spite of these tremendous disadvantages, how- ever, the gallant Parry and his crews persevered for more than a month, and actually attained the lati- tude of 82° 40', which decidedly entitles them to the well-earned distinction of being the "Champions of the North." On the 27th of July, however, their solar observations gave them the most dishearten- ing proofs that they were only making the sort of progress that a squirrel makes in a cage, or a horse in one of those ingenious saw-mills used at the rail- way stations in America ; for while, during the last three days, with incredible labor, they had gone about ten miles to the front, the Arctic current had driven the ice fourteen miles to the rear underneath their feet! At this rate of traveling, it is capable of demonstration that they would have reached the south pole sooner than the north, and Parry was therefore obliged — but one can well understand with what heartfelt reluctance he did so — to give it up. I believe, however, that that distinguished navi- gator always maintained, to the last day of his life, that it was perfectly possible to make a sledge ex- pedition to the north pole successfully. ALEXEI MARKHOFF'S EXPEDITION. 183 In this belief the late Dr. Scoresby also concur- red ; and certainly no two men can be named who were more entitled to give an opinion on the sub- ject. It may also be remarked that Arctic sledge-trav- eling has become very much better understood since the days of Parry ; and one has only to read the narratives of Dr. Kane, Sir Leopold M'Clintock, and others, to see what can be performed by zeal- ous and resolute men with well-appointed dog- sledges. In Muller's "Voyages from Asia to America" there is an account of a sledge-journey which seems to me to go a long way toward establishing the practicability of the thing. In 1715, one Alexei Markhoff was sent by the Russian government to explore the ocean lying to the north of Siberia ; and this gallant fellow, with eight others, set off in sledges, drawn by dogs, on March 10th, from the mouth of the River Jana, in latitude 70° 30'. They traveled due north, as fast as the dogs could go, for seven days, by which time they had got to about the 78th degree of latitude (400 miles in seven days). Here their progress was interrupted by the excessive roughness and irregularity of the ice, and they were compelled to retrace their steps. Mark- hoff seems to have made the dangerous error of mis- calculating the quantity of his provisions, or of overestimating the endurance of his dogs ; for, on his return journey, he fell short of provisions, and 184 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. it was only by the desperate expedient of killing some of his dogs to feed the others that he and his companions got back in safety. For this reason, the return journey seems to have occupied a much longer time than the run north, for he only return- ed to Ustianskoe Simowie, the place from which he had started, on April 3d. As Alexei Markhoffhad thus traveled upward of 400 miles in seven days, and upward of 800 miles in twenty-four days, there can surely be no abso- lutely insuperable reason why other people, better provided than he was, should not be able to travel 1200 miles in thirty-six days, or even in less time, especially as modern science has done so much in the way of condensing nutritious substances into small bulk, that the difficulties as to provisions, which MarkhofF had to contend with, might be greatly lessened in the case of a fresh expedition. HALF-MOON ISLAND. 185 CHAPTER XIII. Whales' Bones. — Rapid Elevation of the Land. — Early Whale- fishery. — Shallowing of the Sea. — Trench plowed by an Ice- berg.— Last Day at the Sea-horses. — Successful Stalk and double Shot. — Lose two Harpoons. — Very bad Luck. — Dif- ficulty of shooting Walruses. — Gale. — Wrecks in Spitz- bergen. — Insurance. — Kill a White Whale. — Description of the same. — Sail to the Rendezvous. After this long digression about the North Pole, I resume the narrative of our proceedings. Early in the morning of the 18th we had got back to Black Point, having been turned out of bed at midnight and at 4 A.M. to polish off seals which came in sight. At eight o'clock we started in both boats, and proceeded, Lord David to Halmanne (or Half- moon) Island, and myself to a cluster of rocky islands lying four or five miles E.S.E. of Black Point. We did not expect to do much good in the way of sport, so we both agreed to bring back boat- loads of fire-wood from our respective islands if we should get nothing better to load them with. I landed upon one of the islands, and ascended to the highest point to look, out ; there was some ice vis- ible in different directions around, but I could dis- cover nothing alive upon it, so I set the boat's crew 186 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. to load up with drift-wood, quantities of which, of excellent quality and in every stage of preserva- tion, strewed the shores of this island. While they were so engaged I walked about and geologized. The island was in every respect sim- ilar to those which I have already described; a great deal of drift-wood lay far above high-water mark, and in positions where it could not possibly have been driven by storms in the present relative levels of land and sea. Numbers of whales1 bones also lay upon this island from the sea-level up to the top of the rocks, which may have been thirty-five to forty feet in height. Those bones lying high above the sea- level were invariably much more decayed and moss-grown than those lower down. Some of them were of enormous size. In one slight de- pression of the island, about ten feet above the sea-level, I counted eleven enormous jaw-bones, all lying irregularly and mixed indiscriminately with many vertebra?, ribs, and pieces of skulls. Of course it will be understood that these bones which I men- tion in different parts of this narrative were not fossilized. We found them in many parts of Spitz- bergen, and at all elevations up to that of two hundred feet above the sea. I brought home many specimens, which are now in the Museum of the Geological Society. Could an approximation to the age of these bones be in any way arrived at, they would give some chronological data for determ- ELEVATION OF THE LAND. 187 ining the time which the land whereon they were found has been in emerging from the sea and at- taining its present level. My own impression, for many reasons, is, that the whole of Spitzbergen has been gradually rising within the last few hundred years, and that this upheaval is still continuing. It is perhaps impossible to judge of the length of time which such enormous bones may endure in a climate like this, where they are bound up in ice for eight or nine months out of the twelve ; but allowing, at a guess, four hundred years for bones lying at an elevation of forty feet, which is about the highest at which I have found entire skeletons, and adding twelve feet of water for the whale to have floated in when he died there, we shall arrive at thirteen feet per century as the rate of eleva- tion. From the position of the eleven jaw-bones, etc., which I have just mentioned, and from the fact of so many lying together in a slight hollow, I am in- clined to believe that these are the remains of whales killed by man, and that they were towed into this hollow (then a shallow bay) for the purpose of be- ing flensed there. We learn from the accounts of the early whale-fishers that their usual practice was to flense their whale3 in the bays ; and, in fact, that the whales were so abundant close to the shore, that the ships did not require to leave their anchorage in the bays at all. It was about the year 1650 that the whale-fishery in the bays of Spitzbergen 188 ' ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. was in its prime. Thus, supposing these whales to have been killed in that bay two hundred years ago, allowing three fathoms (the very minimum) for the ship to have anchored in, and adding the ten feet which the bones are now above the sea- level, we have twenty-eight feet of elevation in two hundred years, or very nearly the same rate as I have arrived at by the other example. The enormous numbers of whales which, in the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth centu- ries, frequented first the bays, next the coasts, and lastly the banks lying outside the coasts of Spitz- bergen, have now entirely deserted these waters alto- gether. Nobody ever thinks of going to the neigh- borhood of Spitsbergen now to catch whales. Dur- ing the whole summer we only saw three individu- als of the Mysticetus. M 'Culloch and other com- mercial Avriters attribute this migration of the whales to the persecution they underwent, saying that they were all killed or frightened away ; but, although their disappearance is undoubtedly par- tially attributable to that cause, I believe the prin- cipal reason to be that the seas around Spitzbergen have become too shallow for them : this is the gen- eral belief of the sealers frequenting the coast, only they generally put the cart before the horse by say- ing that "the sea is going back." I have heard the same remark made by the sail- ors and fishermen on the west coast of Norway, where Sir Charles Lyell ("Principles of Geology,,, LAST DAY WITH THE SEA-HORSES. 189 p. 506) has shown to demonstration that the coast- line is rising at the rate of four feet per century. On this island I observed a farther most inter- esting proof of its elevation. This was a sort of trench or furrow, of about one hundred yards long, three or four feet deep, and about four feet broad, which was plowed up among the boulders. It was about twenty feet above the sea-level, and extended from northeast to southwest, being exactly the line in which the current-borne ice travels at the pres- ent day, so that I presume there is no doubt it must have been caused by the passage of a heavy iceberg while the island lay under water. We left the island about one o'clock to inspect some small packs of floating ice, and, most unex- pectedly, I had one of the most exciting afternoon's sport I enjoyed the whole season, although it was attended throughout with the most perverse bad luck. As this was the last day on which we saw any walruses at all, I will venture, even at the risk of horrifying the sensitive reader, to give an account of it in detail. We first found five good bull-walruses on a piece of ice. Four were sound asleep, with their sterns toward us, but the remaining villain seemed to be acting as sentry; however, he permitted us to ap- proach to about thirty yards1 distance, when he snorted, and began to kick his sleeping companions to arouse them. I had covered the sentinel's head, and had determined that he should pay for his alert- 190 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. ness with his life, when suddenly a bull with much better tusks lifted his head above the sentinel's back ; so, quickly changing my aim, I shot this oth- er bull through the head, and he tumbled forward on the ice, so dead that he lay with his head doub- led under him and the points of his tusks thrust into his stomach ; the rest then escaped. We found that the bull I had shot had given up the ghost in that peculiar state described by the historian Gib- bon (in a Latin note) as having been the last dy- ing position of the prophet Mohammed. To make room in the boat for his skin and blubber, we threw out a proportionate quantity of the fire-wood. In about another hour we found a solitary old bull asleep on a very small piece of ice. He lay on his side, with his back to leeward, which is the very best possible position for either shooting or harpooning a walrus. I felt perfectly certain of this one, and I resolved not to fire, but to allow the harpoon to do the business. When we got to ten or twelve yards' distance, however, the brain of the walrus was so beautifully developed that I could not resist the temptation of firing, and I according- ly shot him through the back of the head ; but, to my unspeakable vexation and disgust, in the act of dying he gave a convulsive half turn backward, and the edge of the ice giving way underneath him, he sank like a shot, only, as it were, a quarter of a sec- ond before the harpoon swished into the water aft- er him. This mishap was my own fault, and I bit- RIGHT AND LEFT SHOT. 191 terly anathematized my own impatient folly in fir- ing when it was not the least necessary. We next found in succession three large seals, and I killed them all. We secured two, but lost the third from the edge of the ice giving way be- neath him in his dying convulsion, precisely in the same way as with the last walrus. After rowing for an hour or two more, we found two lots of walruses on ice about an English mile apart. One lot consisted of four and the other of five, and all were bulls of the first magnitude. We took the former first, and, by taking advantage of a sort of screen of ice, we got within six yards of the partie carree without their perceiving us. They lay very favorably for us, two being close together to the right, and the other two about five yards to the left. I silently motioned to Christian to take the right-hand ones, and, like lightning, he darted one harpoon and thrust the other. At the sound of the harpoons, my two particular friends to the left raised themselves on the ice to see what was going on, and, the instant they did so, I took them quickly right and left on the sides of their heads, and they tumbled lifeless on the ice, one falling across the body of the other. " Hurrah !" thought I, "here is luck at last; four of the biggest bulls in Spitzbergen all secured at one stalk." Nothing could have been more complete and more beautiful than it looked. My exultation was, however, a lit- tle premature, for one of the harpooned walruses 192 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. was selfish enough to spoil this very pretty thing by breaking loose and escaping. As we afterward found, this had happened through the line having got twisted round the animal's body and cutting it- self against the edge of the harpoon. I then finish- ed off the remaining " fast" one by shooting him, in doing which I unfortunately smashed the fore part of his head, and spoiled a very fine pair of long white tusks. After flensing these victims, we re- quired to throw out all the remaining fire-wood to make room for them, and yet the boat was up to the thwarts with skins, and blubber, and heads. We then turned our attention to the troop of five, which were still in sight about a mile off. This lot lay upon a rather large, sloping iceberg ; we had no cover, and we were obliged to approach at the high side of the berg to get the wind, so that when we got to about forty yards the walruses took the alarm and began to move. I again shot a magnificent bull, with fine tusks, through the head, but, unluck- ily, not quite in the fatal spot ; he fell on the ice, but succeeded in regaining his feet, and began to stagger slowly down the slope after the others, who had by this time gained the sea. The rowers ran the boat against the ice, and Christian and my- self jumped out and ran down the sloping ice to intercept the walrus ; not being able to see his head, I fired an unavailing shot into his shoulder, and Christian, getting to the brink of the ice just as the walrus was staggering in, thrust the bar- LOSS OF A HARPOON. 193 poon into his posteriors ; the line ran to the end, and then, the boat being fast against the ice, it snapped like a thread, and the walrus was lost. This had been an old line, much used, and, before leaving the iceberg where we had killed the last ones, I had pointed out a weak place in it to Christian, and requested him to change it or to splice out the defective part ; he had, however, contented himself with tying a big ugly knot across the flaw, and at that knot the line gave way; I therefore blamed the harpooner for the loss of this walrus ; but probably, under the circumstances, any line would have given way in like manner. We then found three large bulls, two of which were asleep, but the third one, acting as look-out, kicked his friends awake on our approaching to forty or fifty yards' distance. I shot the best one on the side of the head with two barrels, but all three got into the water, the wounded one bleeding most profusely. We followed them for six or seven dives, in hopes of securing this one ; but, although he was very sick and faint, the others kept close to him, and always gave him timous notice when to dive ; at last I shot the two sound ones through the head, one after the other; but there was now a considerable sea running, and the boat was so heavy with skins and blubber that they both sank before we could harpoon them. After his pro- tectors were gone, I made sure of getting the one first wounded, but after getting close to him once N 194 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. or twice more, we lost sight of him among the ice, and saw him no more. The sloop was now six or seven miles off, and we had a weary row of several hours, against a heavy sea, which nearly swamped the deep-laden boat, and prevented us getting on board until past midnight. No one who has not tried it will readily believe how extremely difficult it is to shoot an old bull- walrus clean dead. The front or sides of his head may be knocked all to pieces with bullets, and the animal yet have sense and strength sufficient left him to enable him to swim and dive out of reach. If he is lying on his side, with his back turned to his assailant, it is easy enough, as the brain is then quite exposed, and the crown of the head is easily penetrated ; but one rarely gets the walrus in that position, and when it so happer.s, it is generally better policy to harpoon him without shooting. By firing at an old bull directly facing you, it is almost impossible to kill him ; but if half-front to you, a shot just above the eye may prove fatal. If sideways, he can only be killed by aiming about six inches behind the eye, and about one fourth of the apparent depth of his head from the top ; but the eye, of course, can not be seen unless the animal is very close to you, and the difficulty is enormously increased by the back of the head being so im- bedded in fat as to appear as if it were part of the neck. WRECKS IN SPITZBERGEN. 195 If you hit him much below a certain part of the head you strike the jaw-joint, which is about the strongest part of the whole cranium. A leaden bullet striking there, or on the front of the head, is flattened like a piece of putty, without doing much injury to the walrus; and we sometimes found that even our hardened bullets, propelled by five drachms of powder, were broken into little pieces against the rocky crania of these animals. On the 19th we had a storm from the southwest, and lay-to all day ; as it increased toward the even- ing, and the motion aggravated the smell from the hold to an intolerable extent, we took shelter to the leeward of Halmanne Island, and came to an anchor there about midnight. The gale continued on the 20th, so we remained in shelter, and sent both boats ashore for fire-wood and water. The wood we procured on this island was mostly part of the remains of a schooner from Hammerfest, which had been lost in this bay in a gale of wind five years ago ; it was her first voyage, and they had neglected to make the cable fast at the inner end, the consequence of which lubberly pro- ceeding naturally was that it all ran out, and the vessel drove ashore and went to pieces. From what I have heard, I am inclined to sus- pect that a good many of the shipwrecks which happen in Spitzbergen are caused willfully, in order to defraud the insurance-offices. These vessels are principally insured in Hamburg, and I believe the 196 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. rate of insurance is as high as seven per cent., al- though one would think that even that was little enough for the unavoidable risks of such a danger- ous voyage, without taking into consideration the impunity with which such nefarious proceedings as I have alluded to may be committed in those dis- tant waters. The 21st being Sunday, we staid on board, and I wrote up the last few pages of this Journal. About 3 A.M. on the 2 2d we were aroused by a report of many white whales being alongside. We got up instantly, and jumped into the boats with our rifles. There was a very dense fog, but the bay seemed to be full of the whales, as we heard them blowing all around the vessel. We pulled off into the fog where the blowing seemed most frequent, and soon found ourselves surrounded by twenty or thirty of these animals, showing up their heads and backs, and spouting. They were of a brilliant, shin- ing, snowy whiteness, and when they were near us we could see them swimming under water. We lay on our oars, and I waited a little for a good chance, until at last I saw a large one under water approaching the boat. Holding my rifle ready at my shoulder, I was quite prepared for him, and the instant he appeared above the surface I shot him through the head, immediately behind the blow- holes. He disappeared in a cloud of foam and blood, but, upon rowing quickly to the spot, I was just in time to strike a walrus harpoon into him as DESCRIPTION OF BELUGA. 197 he sank about eight feet beneath the surface, and we instantly followed this up with another, for fear it should draw. A vigorous application of the lance, accompanied by a peculiar pump-handling motion of the weapon, soon settled the business, and, getting a running noose round his tail, we tow- ed him along to the sloop. Many others now ap- peared close round the boat, the old ones white and shiny, like immense shapes of blanc-mange, and the young ones of a dusky gray in color. I could easi- ly have shot more ; but, being incommoded by the dead one towing astern, we should not have been able to secure them, as this whale sinks when dead. We hove our victim on deck, with some difficul- ty, by means of two strong tackles attached to the rigging and one of the boat's davits, and proceeded to examine him. He was fourteen feet long, by about ten feet in circumference, and of a snow-white color all over. His skin was perfectly smooth, and rather shiny. The head was very small and round. He had a row of small teeth in both jaws. No dorsal fin. The eyes and ears were both extreme- ly small. The skin was of a curious, gristly, ge- latinous consistency, and cut very readily with a knife ; it was about half an inch thick, and firmly attached to the underlying blubber, which was about two and a half inches thick, and measured about 500 lbs. when packed in casks. We kept it sepa- rate from the seal, bear, and walrus blubber, as it is of much superior quality to any of these, and pro- duces a far finer oil. 198 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. This was not a full-sized specimen of Baloena at- bicans, as I believe they sometimes attain to a length of twenty feet, and circumference of twelve; but we were very much pleased at having obtained a spec- imen, as this was the only one we killed, and the only time we had an opportunity of seeing these animals alive. They are rather rare on this part of the coast, although frequenting the bays on the west coast of Spitzbergen in great numbers during the summer months. There are said to be great numbers of this whale in the estuaries of the great rivers of Siberia, and the natives there sometimes kill them in large quan- tities by stretching strong nets across the tideways, and then harpooning or spearing them. After breakfast the fog cleared away, and the gale being now gone, we left our anchorage at Hal- manne Island, and cruised about all day. The ice has all been driven away again to the northeast by the late gale, and we were unwilling to go north again so late in the season, as the chances of bad weather are now considerable. We held a council of war, therefore ; and, as it was clear we could do little more with the walruses this season, we de- termined to seek the "Ginevra" at the rendezvous of the Russian huts, and to devote a few days to reindeer stalking in the valleys up Stour Fiord. We reached the harbor at Hvalfiske Point about 9 P.M. on the 23d. SMEERENBERG, OR BLUBBER TOWN. 199 CHAPTER XIV. Smeerenberg, or Blubber Town. — Agremens of ditto. — Dis- covery of Spitzbergen. — Barentz. — Whale-fishery. — At- tempts to colonize the Country, and to make it a penal Set- tlement.— They fail. — The West Indies versus Spitzbergen. — Russian Robinson Crusoes. — Wintering Establishment. — How conducted. — Awful Mortality. — Final Tragedy. — Death of eighteen Men from Scurvy and Hunger. — Ingen- ious Counter-irritant. — Russian Bath. — Cricket. — Boats sewed together. — Post-office. — Signs of Deer. — Kill three Geese with Ball. — Find the "Ginevra," and change into her. — Nautical Nimrods. — Amusing Walrus-hunt. — Gun bursts. I have often been asked "what the inhabitants of Spitzbergen are like," but I need scarcely men- tion to the intelligent reader that Spitzbergen never has been inhabited, unless we include under that term the nourishing summer settlement of Smeer- enberg, or New Amsterdam, near Hakluyt's Head- land, which was the rendezvous and boiling estab- lishment of the Dutch whaling-fleet during the palmy days of the Spitzbergen whale-fishery in the seventeenth century. Smeerenberg (Anglict Blubber Town), indeed, arrived at such a degree of civilization and refine- ment that "hot rolls" were to be had every morn- ing for breakfast ; and, if report speaks true, even 200 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. the charms of female society were not wanting to "emollify the manners" and lighten the pockets of the successful fishers. But Smeerenberg was only a summer settlement, and was always entirely abandoned at the approach of winter. Spitzbergen (literally "sharp-topped mountains") was discovered and named in 1596 by the third expedition under William Barentz, a Dutchman, and one of the most distinguished navigators of the age, who was sent by the States-General of Holland to try to discover a northeast passage to China, a chimerical project, which in those days caused the sacrifice of even more lives and treasure than the search after a northwest passage in later times. Barentz himself, and a number of his crew, lost their lives on this expedition ; and the re- mainder only escaped by taking to their boats, after passing a winter of incredible hardships on the coast of Nova Zembla, where they had got be- set, and were compelled to abandon their vessel. In the early part of the seventeenth century Spitzbergen became the seat of the most flourish- ing whale-fishery that ever existed, as many as be- tween 400 and 500 sail of vessels, principally Dutch and Hamburgers, resorting there in a season. It then became obvious that it would be very advan- tageous if something in the shape of a permanent settlement or colony could be founded in Spitz- bergen ; and the merchants engaged in the trade offered rewards to their crews, to induce some of ATTEMPTS TO COLONIZE SPITZBEROEN. 201 them to make the hazardous experiment of trying whether human life could be supported there dur- ing the winter. For a long time this was believed to be impossible; and, as no volunteers could be prevailed upon to risk their lives in the solution of the interesting problem, an English company hit upon the ingenious and economical idea of trying it upon some criminals who were under sentence of death in London. Accordingly, they procured *'a grant" of these culprits — probably sheep-stealers, papists, or some such atrocious criminals — and of- fered them their lives on condition that they would pass, or try to pass, one winter in Spitzbergen. Of course they were glad to purchase their lives on any terms, and at once acceded to the conditions. They were taken out in one of the whalers, and a hut was erected for their winter-quarters ; but when the fleet was about to depart, and they saw the aw- ful gloomy hills, already white with the early snows, and felt the howling gales of northeast wind, their hearts utterly failed them, and they entreated the captain who had charge of them to take them back to London and let them be hanged, in pursuance of their original sentence, rather than leave them to perish in such a horrible country ! The captain seems to have had more of the "milk of human kindness11 in him than his philanthropic employers, for he acceded to their request, and took them back to London. As hanging them would not have been of any pecuniary benefit to the company, they 202 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. were then good enough to procure a pardon for the men. This story reminds me of a conversation which I once heard some of my yacht's crew holding to- gether. They were discussing the respective merits of hot and cold countries — the West Indies versus Spitzbergen ; and one fellow was urging that, al- though " neither rum nor tobacco grew in Spitz- bergen,1' still, the continual "blow-out11 of fat rein- deer which it seemed to afford might be considered as a point in its favor. To him the other : " Well, Bob, all I can say is, that I would a deuced sight rather go to the West Indies and be hanged there, than die a natural death in this here coun- try!11 Soon after the failure of the criminal plan, the experiment of wintering in Spitzbergen was invol- untarily tried by four Russian sailors, whose vessel was lost or driven away by ice while they were ashore on a desolate part of the east division of the island. These poor fellows had nothing but what they stood up in, with one gun and a few charges of ammunition ; but they appear to have been men of a very different stamp from the London jail- birds, and they at once set to work to make the best of things. They built a hut, and killed some reindeer with their gun, and then, their ammunition being exhausted, they manufactured bows and ar- rows, spears and harpoons, of drift-wood. They pointed their weapons with bones and pieces of RUSSIAN ROBINSON CRUSOES. 203 their now useless gun, and twisted their bowstrings out of reindeers' entrails. They made traps and nets for birds and foxes. With these rude and im- perfect weapons they not only provided themselves with food and raiment, but kept off the assaults of the Polar bears. It is almost incredible ; but these men not only survived, but preserved good health for six long years. It seems extraordinary that such energetic fellows as they clearly were should not, in all that time, have contrived to travel across the country, or round the shore, to the west coast, where they would have been certain of relief every summer, especially as they were on the most deso- late part of the island, and one often inaccessible, and always little frequented by the whalers. In the sixth year of their captivity one of the four died, and the survivors began to lose all hope of deliverance, and to fall into a state of despondence, which would certainly have soon proved fatal to them all had not a vessel at this time fortunately approached the coast and rescued them. During their long banishment these poor Robinson Cru- soes had killed such quantities of bears, deer, seals, and foxes, that the proceeds of the skins and blub- ber made a small fortune for them. Other parties of winterers were left on these des- olate shores, both accidentally and intentionally ; and although in some cases they all miserably perished, still the possibility of maintaining life throughout the horrors of a Spitzbergen winter was 204 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. made manifest, and a company of Russian traders in Archangel organized a regular wintering estab- lishment, for the purpose of hunting the seal and the walrus, the Polar bear and the reindeer. Their men were left there in September or October, and were distributed in small parties of two, three, or four individuals each, in wooden huts, which had been constructed in Archangel, and were erected in different parts of the coasts and islands of Spitz- bergen. The men were paid by a share of the pro- ceeds, and were supplied by their employers with provisions, consisting principally of rye meal, salt pork, and tea. They had a sort of head-quarters es- tablishment at Hvalfiske Point, which was under the charge of a superintendent or clerk, who dis- tributed the supplies to the hunters, and collected the skins and blubber from the different outposts ; and the company sent over a vessel in the month of May every year to relieve the men and carry the proceeds of their labors to Archangel. It was probably found to be too severe a strain upon the constitution to pass successive winters in this way, as I believe it was usual for these men only to remain every alternate winter in Spitzber- gen. In 1858 I was informed there was still living at Kola, in Lapland, an aged Russian who had actu- ally wintered thirty-five alternate seasons at Spitz- bergen. Many of these hardy fellows, however, succumbed to scurvy and the hardships they en- dured ; and many hundreds must have thus miser- FINAL TRAGEDY. 205 ably perished, as the traveler in these awful soli- tudes frequently comes across the ruins of a small log hut, with two or three green mounds or cairns of stones in front of it ; and it is also common enough to see the skeletons of the hapless Russians bleaching alongside of those of the bears and rein- deer they had killed and subsisted on while living. They seem to have killed an immense quantity of animals of different sorts, and the consequent prof- its must have been large, as, in spite of the number of lives which were lost, the establishment was kept up until about seven or eight years ago, when such a dismal tragedy occurred at Hvalfiske Point that the company was broken up, and I believe no one has ever since wintered in Spitzbergen. During the summer of the year* in question a prodigious quantity of heavy drift-ice surrounded Hvalfiske Point and all the southern coast of East Spitzbergen. The men belonging to the Russian establishment had all come in from the various out- posts, and were assembled at the head-quarters to the number of eighteen, waiting to be relieved by the annual vessel from Archangel. By a concur- rence of bad fortune, this vessel was lost on her voy- age over, and was never heard of again. The crews of the other vessels in Spitzbergen knew nothing of these men, or, if they did, they naturally sup- posed that the care of relieving them might safe- * I forget the precise date, but I think it was either 1850 or 1851. 206 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. ly be left to their own vessel, as nothing was yet known of her loss either there or at Archangel. The ice in the summer months prevented any ves- sel from accidentally approaching Hvalfiske Point, and no one went near it until the end of August, when a party of Norwegians, who had lost their own vessel, traveled along the shore to seek for as- sistance from the Russian establishment ; but, on approaching the huts, they were horror-struck to find its inmates all dead. Fourteen of the unhap- py men had recently been buried in shallow graves in front of the huts, two lay dead just outside the threshold, and the remaining two were lying dead inside, one on the floor and the other in bed. The latter was the superintendent, who had been able to read and write, and a journal-book lying beside him contained a record of their sad fate. It appeared that early in the season scurvy of a malignant character had attacked them ; some had died at the out-stations, and the survivors had with difficulty assembled at the head-quarter station, and were in hopes of being speedily relieved by the vessel ; but the latter not arriving, their stores got exhausted, and the unusual quantity of ice surround- ing the coast prevented them from getting seals or wild-fowl on the sea or the shore. In addition to the scurvy, they then had the horrors of hunger to contend with, and they gradually died one after an- other, and were buried by their surviving compan- ions, until at last only four remained. Then two A MELANCHOLY PICTURE. 207 more died, and the other two, not having strength to bury them, dragged their bodies outside the hut and left them there. These two then lay down in bed together to await their own fate, and when one of them died, the last man — the writer of the jour- nal— had only sufficient strength remaining to push his dead companion out of the bed on the floor, and had soon afterward expired himself, only a few days before the Norwegian party arrived. The Russians had a large pinnace in the harbor and several small boats on shore, but the ice at first prevented them reaching the open sea, and latter- ly, when the ice opened out, those who survived so long were much too weak to make any use of the boats. The shipwrecked Norwegians, therefore, took advantage of the pinnace to effect their own escape to Hammerfest, carrying with them the poor superintendent's journal, which the Russian consul at that port transmitted to Archangel. When I first visited this spot in 1858, I took a photograph of it. Every thing then remained almost exactly as the unfortunate Russians left it, and some of their weapons, cooking utensils, and ragged fragments of clothes and bedding lay scattered around. A great many skulls and bones of bears, foxes, deer, seals, and walruses also testified to their success as hunters. We likewise found a curious implement, like a miniature wooden rake, the use of which con- trivance was a complete enigma to me until our 208 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. pilot explained that such were commonly used by the Russians when they suffered from entomological annoyances. The huts were all formed of logs dovetailed into one another at the corners, and were tolerably en- tire except the roofs, which had been flat and cov- ered with earth, but had now mostly fallen in. The principal one, about twenty-four feet square, had been used both as sitting-room and dormitory; off this was a small wing with a brick fire-place, evidently used as a kitchen. Another hut was the store-house, and a third — of all things in the world — a Russian bath-house of a rude description, in which I suppose they had enjoyed the national luxury of parboiling themselves, and then rolling in the snow at a temperature of — 50° or so. The roof of the main hut had fallen in, and a little glacier, about as large as a boat turned bottom up, had formed in the middle of the floor. On a gen- tle eminence, at a distance of two or three hundred yards from the huts, they had built up a sort of look-out house of loose stones, and here we may conceive they passed alternately many weary hours in watching the ice-laden sea before them. They may even have been tantalized by seeing the topsails of vessels passing outside of the icy barrier, but far beyond their reach. On a little piece of level ground, not far from the huts, they had kept themselves in exercise by playing at a game resembling cricket, as was evident by the bats BOATS SEWN TOGETHER. 209 and rude wooden balls they had used still lying on the mossy ground. Altogether there was some- thing inexpressibly sad and desolate about the re- mains of this unfortunate establishment; and by the rude Norwegian sealers the place is regarded with a degree of superstitious awe, which perhaps may be the reason for the huts being in such a good state of preservation. As my English sailors were not afflicted with any similar scruples, and as we were in urgent need of fire-wood, we took the liber- ty of appropriating some pieces of one of the out- houses, although I would not allow the standing parts of the walls to be pulled down, in case the huts might be called upon to do duty again as winter-quarters for any shipwrecked crew. We also broke up a large boat, which never could have been made seaworthy again, and which, having been thickly smeared with pitch, made excellent fire-wood. This boat, instead of being fastened to- gether with metal nails or rivets, had been sewed together with twigs or withes of twisted birch, and was even then surprisingly strong, the birchen withes remaining quite sound and undecayed. This construction of boat is, I believe, commonly used in Siberia and Russian Lapland. We arrived in the "Anna Louisa" off Hvalfiske Point on the evening of the 23d, and were surprised not to find the yacht in the harbor ; so we took a boat, and landed to see if Mr. Wood had left any letters in the post-office to say where he was. On 0 210 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. entering the door, I pointed out to Kennedy my name and that of my yacht, which — more Britan- norum — I had engraved on the lintel in letters three inches long on my visit the previous year. Hung up by a rope-yarn to one of the ceiling- beams we found a letter from Mr. Wood, saying that he had been obliged by the gale of the 19th and 20th to leave that harbor,- and take refuge in another a few miles to the north. As the night was fine, Kennedy and myself decided on walking there, and so we sent our boat's crew on board the sloop and set off alone, thinking the distance was only two or three miles, and that we might fall in with some geese on the way. To the north and east was an immense flat, at least five or six miles in breadth, extending from the shore to the hills ; it was dead level, and beautifully green, with mosses slightly intersprinkled with grass, and looked as if it ought to be a very good place for deer, but we could see none. This part of the island is very lit- tle frequented by deer in the summer months, al- though they are said to come down here in immense numbers during winter. The plain was strewed with quantities of their cast horns and tufts of win- ter hair. "We saw vast flocks of Brent or Bernacle geese (Anas Bernicla) pasturing on the plain, but as these birds in the winter get the benefit of en- larging their minds by a European education, they took quite as good care of themselves as they do when they are "down South." The walking KILL THREE GEESE WITH BALL. 211 across the flat was awfully bad, as we went nearly up to the knees in the soft, splashy, mossy ground at every step, so we took toward the shore, intend- ing to follow it up until we should find the harbor mentioned by Mr. Wood's letter. The shore was also very bad walking, and after traveling much farther than we had expected, and seeing nothing of the yacht, we began to think there must be some mistake ; and not being in good walking condition after our long confinement in the sloop, we began also to get tired, and to think we should have to pass the night on the shore. We determined not to pass it supperless, at all events, if we could help it ; so, observing a large flock of geese in a sort of creek on the shore, with a ridge of trap rocks on one side of them, we commenced to stalk them, in hopes of getting near enough to kill one with our rifles. When we got behind the rocks we agreed sotto voce that I should fire first ; so, peering over the rocks, I saw the geese all busy guzzling among the mud, and, taking a cool aim, I was lucky enough to send rifle-balls through two of them by a right and left shot ; they were young birds, and were slow in getting on the wing, which enabled Lord David, by a beautiful shot, to knock over a third as they squattered along the surface of the water. (N. B. — Nothing makes a man shoot so well as the fact of his dinner depending on the shot.) We then walked about a mile or so farther, until we found a sheltered corner among the rocks, 212 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. with lots of drift-wood lying about it; here we agreed to pass the night, and I set about gathering the materials for a fire, and commenced to pluck the geese, while Kennedy walked to the top of a neighboring rocky eminence to take one more look for the yacht. After a while I saw him with my glass beckoning to me ; so, concluding that he had discovered her, I took up the geese and joined him, when I also saw the yacht's topmasts, but still a long way off — above a snug little rock-encompassed cove, where she was perfectly sheltered and almost hidden. We got on board about 4 A.M., not sorry to exchange broiled goose and a bed on the rocks for a supper of reindeer cutlets, with hot brandy and water, and comfortable cots. 24:th. While we were asleep the crew got the an- chor up, and sailed down to where we had left the sloop. Our intention being to go in quest of deer up Wybe Jan's Water, where there was not now much chance of ice, we left the slow-sailing sloop in the anchorage at the Russian huts, and took out of her the two servants and a portion of our kits ; also Christian and Johann, with the two walrus-boats and tackle, in case we should unexpectedly fall in with walruses or seals. We then ran up the fiord before a slashing breeze at ten or eleven knots an hour, a rate of speed which seemed to us little short of miraculous, after the performances of the "Anna Louisa." The yacht's crew were all in good health and AMUSING WALRUS-HUNT. 213 spirits. They had killed seven fat reindeer and one seal, after an expenditure of between five and six hundred rounds of ammunition. The British sail- or is generally a most enthusiastic but lamentably unsuccessful sportsman, and we were exceedingly amused by the way they described their sporting exploits. The mate told me "he never saw hani- mals so hard to kill as the reindeer in his life." "Why, sir," said he, "there was one fellow I fired at, and broke his hind leg — broke it right off, sir — and even that didn't kill him ; and, Lord bless you, sir, he ran much faster on three legs than I could. Then I shot him through the head, sir, and made his jaw hang down ; but even that didn't kill him, till I got up nearer him and gave him a settler." Another sailor gravely told me that he had fired at a white whale from the beach and wounded him, upon which the infuriated monster ran right ashore in its frantic efforts " to get at him." Their description of a walrus-hunt, however, was quite the most refreshing sporting narrative I ever listened to. This unlucky animal, the only one they had seen, floated alongside of the yacht on a cake of ice while they were at anchor in Bell Sound. Half the crew were absent in the whale-boat, which contained all the harpoons and lances ; but Mr. Wood and two hands, armed with a rifle and a shot- gun, valorously attacked the monster in the dingy. Unluckily, they only took two cartridges for the rifle ; but they commenced proceedings by admin- 214 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. istering one of these to the walrus uin his loins,'" that naturally suggesting itself to them as being the most vulnerable part of the animaL It "seemed to go right through the walrus and disabled him, as he did not leave the ice, but merely raised his head and looked at them ; upon which they gave him another bullet — in the head this time." I fan- cy this bullet must have struck the animal on the nostrils, as, upon receiving it, "he scuffled into the water, but could not remain underneath;" so they rowed after him, and continued firing repeated doses of small shot into his face whenever he appeared, until the persecuted amphibian went ashore, and, in the desperation of his heart, "walked back and forward" on the beach. There they thought they were sure of him ; but he contrived to get past them, and finally sunk in deeper water. They then " swept" for him nearly a whole day with a weight- ed rope, but could not recover him. An affair which might have had a termination any thing but comical, however, was, that they had burst the gun I had bought at Hammerfest for them to shoot fowls with. They seemed to attribute this catastrophe to the low price (four and a half dol- lars) which I had given for that weapon ; but as a gentleman who accompanied me last summer had burst a seventy-guinea London rifle near the very same spot, a friend of mine burst a four-barrel the year before in Norway, and my present compagnon de voyage, Lord David Kennedy, burst another ex- BURSTING OF A GUN. 215 pensive rifle, by the same maker, a few years before in India, it seems that even the exorbitant prices charged by the crack London makers afford no se- curity whatever against such accidents ; so that I was inclined to attribute this mishap to careless loading. The explosion had very nearly deprived my valued sailing-master, Mr. Wood, of his left arm ; and as it was, the arm had been burned and lacera- ted in a painful manner, but was now healing. 216 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. CHAPTER XV. Bitter Cold. — Reindeer-shooting. — Three right and left Shots. — Delight of the Sailors. — Black Fox. — Ponche a la Spitz- berg. — Description of the Reindeer. — High Condition he at- tains.— Excellence of his Flesh. — His Ignorance of Man. — Anecdotes. — Fine Valley. — Unexplored Channel. — Near Heinlopen Straits. — Unjust Attack. — Marrow-bones. — Ice- borne Boulders. — Good " Bag." — Two singular Mountains. — Thymen's Straits. — Meritorious Deer. — Receipt for Ka- bobs. — Splendid deer Forest. — Rejoin the Sloop. By seven in the evening we had reached the an- chorage opposite to a valley where I had killed some reindeer in 1858, but, it being Sunday, we did not land, nor was there any inducement to do so, as we could see the entire valley with telescopes from the deck, and there was not a single reindeer visible in it. On the 25th we went ashore in both boats at 4 A.M. of a bitterly cold morning (thermometer 16° in the companion-way). After hauling the boats high and dry out of the reach of accidents, we ran about to warm ourselves, and then, taking different sides of a large wide valley, we proceeded to seek for deer. Lord David unluckily got among ground which had been hunted a few days previously (as we afterward ascertained) by a boat's crew from REINDEER-STALKING. 217 Erics on's brig, and he consequently saw nothing, and returned to the yacht about midday. I walked five or six miles, when I reached a high glen among the hills, and close to the line of per- petual snow and ice. It also snowed hard as we walked up, and it was frightfully cold, as the wind whistled down over the glaciers to the eastward of us. The walking, however, was excellent, as the in- tense frost had frozen the beastly, splashy, muddy, mossy compound which in Spitzbergen represents soil to the consistency of iron. I first found three indifferent young deer on an open place where I could not approach nearer than 250 yards; but I managed to break the shoulder of the best one, and I finished him off with another shot. The other two ran up the glen in the mean time, and I did not follow them, as I now observed two much finer stags on a hill a mile off. I stalk- ed up a little gully, which allowed me to approach quite close to these deer unseen by them ; but the instant I put up my head to look at them they took the alarm, and were going best pace down a steep hill when my bullets overtook them, and they both rolled dead down the hill, going heels over head, like rabbits, as they fell My boat's crew now set to work to gralloch these deer, and to carry them down to the boat — half a deer to a man — while I followed up the glen in search of the two indifferent stags I had lost sight of. I found them about two miles up, and close 218 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. to the edge of the glacier. They were not much alarmed, and had recommenced to feed, so I easily got within shot of them again, and I disposed of them also by a right and left shot. I opened these two deer myself, as the sailors were on their way to the boat. After having concluded this necessary but slightly disagreeable operation, I sat down and had a good look round with my glass. I soon had the satisfaction of discovering two superb stags ly- ing down on the opposite side of the glen. It now began to snow very heavily, and under cover of it I crossed the glen, not far from the stags, without their seeing me. I got up to about a hundred yards or so from them, behind a bank of mossy earth, and shot one of them dead as he lay. The other sprang to his feet on hearing the report, and instantly shared a similar fate. My sailors came back while I was admiring these two splendid stags as they lay bleeding on the snow, and loud were Jack's expressions of wonder, admiration, and delight at finding as many deer ly- ing dead in the glen, after seven hours1 stalking, as had taken them all four weeks to kill. One of these men — a fine young fellow, the very beau-ideal of an English sailor — was an ex-man-of-war 's-man, and had assisted in that deplorable business at Pe- tropaulauski, and he seemed to think that if they had had a few four-barreled rifles on that unhappy occasion, the Roosians would not have had so much the best of it ! PONCHE A LA SPITZBERG. 221 I had now shot all the deer which I could dis- cover in the valley, and more than my four sailors could carry down to the sea in one day. While we were cutting up the last two deer a black fox made his appearance, probably attracted by the smell of the venison ; but he seemed to be fully aware of the important fact that his sable jacket was worth £20,* as he avoided all my attempts to get within rifle-shot of him. Before proceeding to the sea with a second load of meat we ate some biscuits, and, as the intense frost had congealed all the water in this high val- ley, we indulged in a "ponche a la Romaine," or rather "ponehe a la Spitzberg" by saturating cup- fuls of snow with rum ; and I can strongly recom- mend that cordial to any one under similar circum- stances. In this valley I observed some singular conical- shaped masses of trap or other Plutonic rock, which had abruptly burst up through the lime- stone hills. We got on board about 4 P.M., and my four men having walked at least twenty miles, ten of which with half a fat stag on each of their backs, I sent a boat's crew of fresh hands to bring down the remainder of the venison. The reindeer ( Cervus Tarandus) abounds in most parts of Spitzbergen, and in every valley which af- * A good skin of this rare animal is, I believe, the most val- uable fur in the world. 222 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. fords any vegetation, a troop of from three to twenty is generally to be met with. They do not grow to such a large size a? the tame reindeer of Lapland, nor are their horns quite so fine ; but they attain to a most extraordinary degree of condition. This seems to be a sort of provision of nature to enable these animals to exist through the long Polar win- ter, as during that inclement season, although they no doubt obtain a little sustenance by picking the dry withered moss from spots which the wind has cleared of snow, as well as by scraping up the snow with their feet to get at it, still they must in a great measure subsist by consuming internally their own fat. The short space of time which suffices for them to lay on this coat of blubber is perfectly ex- traordinary ; and as scarcely any grass exists even in the most favored parts of Spitzbergen, this must be chiefly attributable to some excessively nutri- tious properties in the mosses on which they feed. The deer killed by my yacht's crew in Bell Sound in July were mere skin and bone, whereas now, in the end of August, every deer we shot was seal-fat, and in all probability their condition goes on im- proving until the end of September. Of those we killed, even the hinds giving milk and the calves were very fat, and the old stags were perfectly obese, having all over their bodies a sort of cylinder of beautifully hard and white fat about two inches thick in most parts, and at least three inches thick over the haunches and on the brisket. We had no EXCELLENCE OP REINDEER FLESH. 223 means of weighing these deer, but I consider that the best stags must have exceeded three hundred pounds in clean weight. I think the flesh of the reindeer is the richest and most delicious meat, wild or tame, which I ever tasted, with the excep- tion of a fat eland, and a diminutive West Indian animal called by the negroes the Lapp* ( Ccelogenys, or Cavia Paqp). Unlike the flesh of most wild an- imals, the venison of the reindeer is not improved by keeping, and I think it is never better than the same day, or even the same hour, that the animal is killed. When it is kept long the fat gets dark colored, and acquires a rank and unpleasant taste and odor. In the summer months they do not live in large herds together. An extensive valley may perhaps contain forty or fifty deer, but they are all in small independent companies of two, four, or six ; and I have seldom, if ever, seen more than eight in one herd. In the winter season, however, when they come down to the islands and the wide flats on the sea-shore, I imagine they congregate in great num- bers, and at that time they travel over long distances of ice and land in search of food. The hair of the reindeer is very long, thick, and close, and is of a slaty-gray color, verging into white about the stern and belly. The hinds have horns * After a somewhat extensive experience in that line, I am inclined to award to the Lapp the palm of being the best cu- linary animal in the world. 224 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. as well as the stags, although of a smaller size. They shed their horns every winter, and numbers of these cast horns strew the plains where the herds have wintered. The deer I had killed on the 25th were reasona- yy shy and wild, as I think they had been hunted by Ericson's boat's crew in the lower valley a few days before; but sometimes they are incredibly tame and fearless, and I have repeatedly known deer, which I had failed in approaching unseen, to come up boldly of their own accord until they were within easy shot of me, although I was not only in full view, but to windward of them! I can only account for this extraordinary temerity on the part of these deer by supposing that they were in- dividuals which had been reared in some remote part of the country, and had never seen a human being, nor any thing else which could hurt them,* in their previous blissful existences. Neither does the report of a rifle much alarm them ; but that is more easily understood, as they are no doubt ac- customed to hearing the cracking of the glaciers and the noises caused by the splitting of rocks from the frost in winter. On one occasion Lord David Kennedy found a troop of five deer, and, obtaining a concealed posi- * There are no wolves in Spitzbergen ; and I am inclined to donbt whether the Polar bear ever meddles with the reindeer, unless he may fall in with a sick or wounded individual near the sea-shore. ROW UP TO THE HEAD OP STOUR PIORD. 225 tion within shot of them, he knocked over four of them with a round from his four-barreled rifle ; the survivor then stood snuffing his dead companions until Kennedy had time to load one barrel, and to consummate this unparalleled sporting feat by pol- ishing him off likewise. Another time we broke one of the fore feet of an old fat stag from an unseen ambush ; his compan- ions ran away, and the wounded deer, after making some attempts to follow them, which the softness of the ground and his own corpulence prevented him from doing, looked about him a little, and then, seeing nothing, he actually began to graze on his three remaining legs as if nothing had happen- ed of sufficient consequence to keep him from his dinner ! On the 26th, we again started at four in the morning in both boats, to make an expedition to the head of Stour Fiord, distant about seventeen miles, with the view of laying in a farther supply of deer. We first ran about six or seven miles under sail, with a fine breeze and smooth water ; and then, the fiord making an abrupt turn to the east,* we were obliged to take to the oars, and after six hours of hard pulling against both wind and tide, we reached the embouchure of an exten- sive flattish valley, which I knew to be one of the best places in the country for deer. Here we left * It is erroneously marked in the charts as if it continued straight north. , P 226 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. Lord David, as I felt sure that he would have no difficulty in filling his boat with venison. Not caring about that description of sport myself, I continued three or four miles farther on, to explore a sort of narrow gut or sound into which the fiord there contracts, in hopes of finding some floating ice with seals, or maybe a bear. We found a good deal of ice, but no seals ; and, on entering the gut, there was such a tremendous current running down it that, after persevering for two or three miles more, we were obliged to stop. I stopped with great reluctance, as I was ex- tremely anxious to ascertain whether this channel really communicates with the East Sea or not Many of the habitues of Spitzbergen believe that it does, but the point has never been clearly settled, as nobody has ever passed through the sound or seen the termination of it. I then tried to continue the exploration by walking up the sides of the sound ; but the ground was so excessively rough as to be almost impracticable for walking, and I had to give it up. Christian had been sixteen seasons in Spitzber- gen, but he had never been so far up as this before, and could give me no information on the subject. He, however, agreed with me in opinion that there was strong evidence in favor of the communication being complete, because the water seemed very deep, and much heavy ice was floating down it ; also, he thought the current was much stronger than was NEAR HEINLOPEN STRAITS. 227 likely to be caused by the mere return of the regu- lar tide down Stour Fiord. The day was tolerably clear, but there was no hill near us on which we could ascend to obtain a more extended view in that direction. From the top of the highest rocks we could find we could see no high land to the eastward, nor any thing but low, flattish, rugged hillocks of a coarse red-brown Plu- tonic rock, with many small glaciers lying among them. The surface of these rocks was much smooth- ened and polished, as if by the passage over them of much heavy ice in by-gone times. There was not a particle of vegetation to be seen, and the as- pect of the country was bleak, sterile, and gloomy beyond description. Christian said the sky in that direction had the peculiar appearance which indicates ice underneath, and altogether our impression was that we were within a very few miles of the East Sea, probably at or about Heinlopen Straits. If the longitude of the coast of these straits is laid down in the charts at all correctly, we undoubtedly were close to them now; but the old charts of Spitzbergen are so extremely defective that no reliance is to be placed upon them in any respect. I turned my back upon these unexplored straits with regret, and we now hoisted the sail and stood slowly along the coast of the main fiord to look for deer. In the first valley we came to we espied some small troops of deer feeding within half a mile 228 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. of the shore. We landed, and I killed nine of them without much trouble, and, as these were thorough- ly unsophisticated animals, I might easily have shot as many more, but I got disgusted with such a bur- lesque upon sport and left them alone. I was much amused by one of these deer — a well-grown stag — who, upon receiving my bullet in his ribs, made a furious attack upon a companion of about his own size, evidently under the impression that the bullet- wound was the result of a treacherous prod from the horns of his friend. While the sailors were carrying down these deer I gathered a lot of drift-wood, and soon made a roaring fire, whereat we boiled some coffee and made a glorious fry of chops and kidneys in the iron bal- ing-ladle of the boat, topping up with broiled mar- row-bones— a very different article, O my dear read- er, from the bestial compound of brains and lard rammed into old bones which you have often eaten in London, and imagined, in the innocence of your heart, to be real marrow. When standing on the rocks up the small sound, I had observed a large bay on the opposite side of the fiord to be full of floating ice, and we now sail- ed across to that in hopes of falling in with seals. It was very suitable ice, but the night was too cold for seals, and we only found two on many square miles of ice. I shot them both, but one of them was lost. I observed a great many large, dark-col- ored stones lying on different pieces of this ice, and HILL WITH BANDS OF COAL. 229 mistook several of them for seals, until we got close enough to discover our mistake. These stones probably tumbled off the hills on the ice while it lay in an unbroken sheet across the fiord, and were now being transported about to be deposited else- where. We had a cold and fatiguing row back to the yacht, and did not reach her until we had been twenty-eight hours absent. As I expected, Lord David had found his valley full of deer, and had shot a boat-load of them. His men had farther to carry them than mine had, so they did not reach the yacht until after an absence of nearly forty hours. I observed two very singular mountains in this trip up the high fiord. One of these was a long, large hill of about 1500 feet in height, and appar- ently composed of the same shaly, sandy limestone as mostly all of the lower hills of East Spitzber- gen ; but it had a perfectly flat or tabular top, and the upper stratum, as well as another band about the middle of the hill, were composed of black sub- stance, which I supposed to be coal. I was not within several miles of the hill, but I estimated the thickness of each of these black bands at about twenty feet. Their substance was evidently pretty hard, as the ends of the bands stood up perpendic- ularly, instead of participating in the otherwise uni- form 45° slope of the hill. At the left-hand or southwesterly side of the hill I could perceive that 230 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. the lower band gradually thinned away to nothing. This hill is very conspicuously placed, and can not fail to be recognized by any future visitor to the upper part of Stour Fiord. The other hill I imagine to be a truncated cone of Plutonic rock, and of it I can hardly hope to give a sketch that will convey any idea of its singular- ly grand and picturesque appearance. It seemed to be about 600 feet high, and two or three miles in circumference at the base ; and the lower two thirds of its height consisted of a steep talus of de- tritus, covered with beautifully variegated mosses, while the upper third was composed of a series of bright russet-colored columns of rock, arranged per- pendicularly, and looking exactly like a number of half-decayed trunks of enormous trees bound togeth- er in a sort of Titanic fagot. 27th. After myself and my boat's crew had had five hours1 sleep, we started again on another trip, my intention being to penetrate well into Walter Thymen's Straits, a narrow passage of twenty or five-and-twenty miles long and five or six in breadth, which divides East Spitzbergen into two nearly equal halves. When there is ice in this strait it is a great thor- oughfare for seals and sea-horses passing from the East Sea into Stour Fiord, and we were in hopes that ice would by this time have been driven into it by the current from the east. It is considered a dangerous place for vessels, on account of the vio- LONG ROCKY PROMONTORY. 231 lent current running through it ; so I preferred go- ing in the boat to risking my yacht itself in the straits. It seemed by the chart as if we had not more than ten or twelve miles to go, as in the chart there is laid down at the northwest corner of the straits what appears to be a bank with shallow water over it, protruding a long way into Stour Fiord. We had a fine day, with a strong, though bitterly cold breeze of east wind, and I steered the boat close along shore, hoping, as it was near high tide, that we might have sufficient depth of water to enable us to make a short cut by sailing over this bank. On reaching the edge of the bank, however, I found, to my surprise, that it was not a submarine bank at all, but an immense flat plain of dry land, edged with a reef of rocks several feet above high tide mark, and we had to make a long detour to get round it. As there has been no survey of Spitzbergen in recent times, and all the charts are copied from an ancient Dutch or Danish one, published two centu- ries or more ago, I think it is highly probable that this point of land was actually under water (as the chart seems to represent it) at the time the latter was constructed, and that it has since been gradu- ally elevated to its present level. Enormous quan- tities of drift-wood lay upon the reef of rocks above the sea-leveL When we had got round this long promontory 232 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. and about six miles into the straits it fell calm, and we encountered such a strong current from the east- ward that we could make no head against it, and, it being now 9 P.M., we went ashore in a little sandy bay to spy out the land, and see whether it afforded any thing for supper. I took my rifle and my glass, and ascended to the top of a neighboring hillock, and from there I soon discovered our even- ing meal provided to our hands in the shape of a fat stag, grazing by himself on the slope of a hill about a mile distant. I therefore announced to the crew that we should sup there, and set two of them to gather wood and make a fire, while the other two accompanied me to carry down the stag, who was still quietly engaged with his own supper, and in a happy state of unconsciousness of how soon he would be called upon to conjugate the verb to $up in a passive instead of an active sense. A beautifully developed terrace of trap rocks con- ducted me within forty yards of the stag, and in twenty minutes more he was at the side of the fire, which, like those of the cannibals in Robinson Cru- soe, had been lighted for him while yet alive. I shudder to think how many pounds of this meritorious animal we consumed in the shape of chops, marrow-bones, and kabobs. The latter I have found on such occasions to be the best mode of cooking fresh-killed meat The mode of preparing them is as follows : First catch a fat deer, then cut a number of RECEIPT FOR KABOBS. 233 wooden skewers, and thread upon these alternately pieces of meat, fat, and heart, each cut to about the size and thickness of a dollar ; broil upon the glow- ing embers, season with wood-ashes in the absence of salt and pepper, and bite them off while smoking hot. If you are hungry, you fancy this the most delicious thing you ever tasted. For my knowl- edge of this most interesting plat I was indebted to a one-eyed Arab cook, yclept Hadji Mohammed, whom Sir F S and myself had on an ex- pedition in Egypt and Palestine some years ago. I have also seen kabobs retailed to the faithful by itinerant cooks in the streets of Constantinople. After supper we erected a screen to windward of the fire by hanging the boat's sail upon the har- poon shafts ; and then, lighting our pipes, we lay down to sleep on the beach, "Pleiras Bacchi,* pinguisque ferinae," like the pious iEneas and his companions on the shores of Italia. We have lost sight of the midnight sun for the last few days, and it was slightly dusk at night. The temperature was far below frost, but we slept very comfortably. The crew kept watch alternate- ly, to mind the boat and keep up the fire, and I could observe, in my waking moments, that the sen- tinel always seemed to be whiling away the tedious hours by renewed attacks upon the carcass of the stag. * For " Bacchi" read " backy," and tho quotation will be more applicable. * 234 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. On awaking in the morning, I summoned one of the men to my assistance, and walked to a place about half a mile distant, where, when stalking the stag the evening before, I had observed some bones of a whale protruding from the moss at a good elevation. The height above the sea proved to be about forty-two feet, and the entire skeleton of a very large whale lay there partially imbedded in moss and earth. There was a terrace of trap rocks between it and the sea, higher in most places than the ground where the bones lay. These were a good deal decayed, and were now frozen hard to the ground, but we managed to extract a piece of a jaw-bone,* tolerably sound, and as large as a man could carry. I sent my attendant back to the boat with this trophy, and I walked to the top of a steep hill, to have a good look along the straits, to see if there was no appearance of the eastern ice coming through. From the height I was on, I must have seen nearly to the east end of the straits ; but they seemed quite clear of ice throughout their entire length. There were two considerable glaciers some miles down the straits, one on each side, and both protruding into the sea. For several miles about me, both to the east and west, there extended the most beautiful piece of country, to the eye of a deer-stalker, which I ever beheld. To the east there lay a low flat plain, * Now in the Museum of the Geological Society. BEAUTIFUL DEER-FOREST. 235 green with succulent mosses, and not less than ten thousand acres in extent ; this plain gradually con- tracted in breadth, until below where I stood, it was only about a mile broad between the hills and the straits, and here it was intersected with dry water-courses, and ridges, and dikes of trap rocks, affording admirable stalking-ground. From the plain up to the rocky hill whereon I stood was a slope or talus, beautifully carpeted with mosses; before me stretched a level plateau, or table-land, and above that a number of grand sheltered cor- ries, with high rugged mountains towering over all. The frost was intense, but the sun shining brightly, the plains and the rocky slopes looked as if cover- ed with a brilliant Turkey carpet, being red, brown, green, yellow, orange, and purple with mosses. The whole scene made up such a picture, or beau-ideal of a deer-forest as I never saw before. I did not care about shooting any more deer now, and there seemed to be no chance of that much more exciting quarry, the sea-horse, so we prepared to start. Before leaving the yacht the day before, I had told Mr. Wood to get up his an- chor as soon as Lord David should return on board, and drop down to a well-known anchorage at the southeast corner of the straits, and I would meet him there; but now, as there was nothing to be done in the straits with the walruses, and we had tons of venison on board, I determined to intercept the yacht, and prevent her from coming to an an- 236 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. chor. "When we saw from the heights, therefore, that the yacht was coming down, we made sail to meet her. Soon after we started, we saw six or seven cakes of ice in a small bay, where they were kept together by a sort of eddy, and upon one of these lay a big seal asleep. I shot him and took him with us; but when we got on board the yacht, I was aston- ished to find that it was Sunday, a fact of which I had previously been quite unaware. We sailed rapidly down the fiord, and joined our consort off Hvalfiske Point in the evening. DEAD WALRUS FOUND. 237 CHAPTER XVI. Dead "Walrus found. — Bears nearly escape, but are caught. — Gale and Ice. — Mynherr Holmengreen. — Presents more Kaffirorum. — Send home the Sloop. — Result of Ericson's eight Months' Voyage. — South Cape. — Sugar-loaf Mountain. — " Right Whales." — Parasitical Gulls. — Practical Joke. — Arctic Fauna. — Chain of Subsistence. — Divergence of White Bear from original Stock. — Probable Origin of the Walrus. — And of the Seal. — Of the Cetaceans. — Changes in the South African Antelopes, caused by Desiccation of that country. t The "Anna Louisa's" people had also killed a few reindeer on the extensive plains near the Rus- sian huts ; and they had found a bull-walrus float- ing dead in the water, and of course added his blubber to the cargo. He was probably one of those we had shot and sunk. I believe they all float up after a few days, but the currents are so strong that they are swept away to sea, and are very rarely recovered. The young bears had made a most determined ef- fort to escape, and had very nearly succeeded. One day, while all hands except the cook were ashore, they had taken the opportunity to eat through the rotten drift-wood composing their cage, and to break out on deck. The cook, hearing the scuffling, of 238 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. their feet, came up and attempted to drive them in again, but they completely got the better of him, and compelled him to make a precipitate retreat to the masthead for security. They then added insult to injury, and still farther embittered the cook's feelings by devouring great part of a haunch of fat venison which was hanging on deck ready for din- ner. Finally, and we may suppose after a facetious grin at the cook aloft, they clambered over the side and swam ashore. Their triumph, however, was not of long duration, for the rest of the crew acci- dentally met them coolly traveling along the shore in the evening; and although at first they were nearly shooting them for wild bears, at last it oc- curred to them, from there being no old one with them, that they were their young shipmates trying to escape; so they pursued and recaptured them, but not until after a most severe struggle, in the course of which one or two of the men got severely bitten by the young demons, who had now grown much too big and strong to be handled with im- punity. We determined to have one more last look at the edge of the main ice pack to the northeast, as the weather was so fine that we thought we might still pick up a sea-horse or two. Both yacht and sloop sailed in company at midnight, steering for Black Point. A howling gale of northeasterly wind came on early in the morning, but the "Ginevra," in which we still continued, easily beat up against it, MYNHERR HOLMENGREEN. 239 and got close to Black Point about 10 A. M. on the 29th. We found great quantities of ice had come down, and long lines of it stretched far away to the south of us. Near Black Point we recognized Danielsen's schooner, and another small vessel from Bergen, commanded by one Mynherr Holmengreen. They were both at anchor, in shelter of an island to leeward of the ice ; and as it was blowing much too hard for boat work, we dropped anchor beside them. Mynherr Danielsen, probably observing the long rows of fat quarters of venison hung up in our rigging, honored us with an immediate call. He said his vessel, with Holmengreen's and our two, were now the only remaining ships in the Spitz- bergen seas. He had been looking for walruses on the Thousand Islands for ten days past; but had got nothing except one of our dead ones. The Bergen schooner had found a herd of several hund- reds on one of these islands ; but the men most in- discreetly attacked them to windward, and the wal- ruses taking the alarm, all rushed into the sea. This must have been the more provoking for the unlucky schooner, as they had only killed fifteen all summer. Mr. Holmengreen also called to pay his respects to us — or our venison; and we were much sur- prised to find him a stout, well-dressed, benevo- lent-looking, elderly party in a brown wig ! Alto- 240 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. gether he had much more the appearance of a well- to-do London merchant than a Spitzbergen walrus- hunter ; and yet this man is said to be one of the pluckiest and most skillful harpooners who ever transfixed a walrus. In the afternoon my steward informed me, with a very serious air indeed, that we were "quite out of sugar," and he suggested that it would be a "good plan to borroiv some from the schooners;'1 so I sent the captains each four fat quarters of deer, and desired one of our harpooners, who car- ried the meat, to say, with my compliments, that if they had any sugar to spare, it would be an accept- able return for the gift, as we were quite out of that luxury. This was somewhat in the Kaffir fashion of making presents, and Johann seemed to think it was to be a literal case of barter ; for he said to me, "I suppose, if they have got no sugar, then I will bring back the deer?" I replied, "Of course not; give the deer, and then ask for some sugar." Nor was my confidence misplaced, for they sent us enough sugar to last us to Hammerfest, and the mind of Mr. Quirk, the steward, was set at rest. 30th. It still blows very hard from north-north- east, with heavy snow. Thermometer is about 28°, and barometer very low. The "Anna Louisa" joined us last night. In the evening it looked no better. The barome- ter ivould not rise, and the ice began to sweep round us ; so Mr. Wood said that he must get the yacht WE ARE DRIVEN AWAY BY ICE. 241 at all events out of this anchorage before next tide, as she had received some very severe bangs from heavy icebergs already; and, not being protected by exterior planking, like the other three vessels, it would not do to expose her to such risk any more. We held a council of war, and discussed three alternatives which we had before us : First : We might shift again into the sloop, and obstinately ride out the gale in her, and then, if it abated within a few days, we might hope for three or four days more at the walruses, if we could find any. In this case the yacht must be sent away in charge of a pilot to await us at South Cape, or else- where, clear of the ice. One grave objection to this course was, that if thick weather came on we might not be able to find the yacht at sea, and there was no harbor in which I would now trust her nearer than Ice Fiord, as Horn Sound and Bell Sound are liable to be choked up in one night when the ice is moving fast round to the westward. Second : We could go home to Hammerfest "holus-bolus," as Mr. Wood expressed it, and, Third: We could send the sloop over to Ham- merfest, and go round to Ice Fiord ourselves in the yacht for a few days. The advantages of the last plan were that the sloop's crew could be paid off, and our cargo valued and accounts squared by the time that we should probably arrive, and that we might thus escape the chance of detention in Ham- merfest. We were also assured of getting plenty Q 242 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. of reindeer, and maybe white whales, in Ice Fiord ; but as that part of the coast is clear of ice in the autumn, we must bid good-by to the sea-horses for this season. After some deliberation, we decided on adopting the last-mentioned plan, and it seemed to give gen- eral satisfaction to all concerned, including the masters of the two schooners, who were resolved to remain to the last, and therefore appeared to think that our terrible rifles would be well out of their way. . In an hour after making up our minds we had got all our things out of the sloop, " liquored-up" the crew of the latter, written a letter to our agents in Hammerfest, got the boats stowed, the anchors up, and made sail, we for South Cape, and the "Anna Louisa" for Hammerfest. We still kept Johann and Christian in the yacht to act as pilots and harpooners. The "Anna Louisa" carried with her a man be- longing to Hammerfest, who had been a harpooner in Ericson's brig. Ericson had left him on board the "Anna Louisa" at Hvalfiske Point, with a let- ter for me, in which he expressed a hope that I would give him a passage to Hammerfest, as it would save the expense and delay of sending him by steam-boat from Tonsberg, in the south of Nor- way, to Hammerfest, in the extreme north. The man thus luckily avoided a voyage of about 3000 miles. ericson's cargo. 243 Poor Ericson has a pretty wife with a young family in Tonsberg, and he must have gone home to her with a heavy heart, for he has made but a bad summer's "fishing" of it. Between Jan Mayen and Spitzbergen, he has been away from home seven months ; and his letter to me mentions that he has only killed 270 Jan Mayen seals, 140 big Spitz- bergen seals, 62 walruses, 4 bears, and 35 reindeer ; a cargo which will afford but a miserable remu- neration for eight* months' time of a brig carry- ing twenty-four men, and constantly manning four boats, and five upon an emergency. 31st. Early in the morning we are off South Cape, the sea quite free from ice and the weather fine. I think storms are very local in Spitzbergen, and it is probably as coarse as ever at Black Pointy that stormy promontory where we encountered so many fierce gales of wind. Very long, low, and dangerous reefs of rocks run out many miles from the land all along the coast, from South Cape to Ice Fiord. The mountains are much higher and steeper than in East Spitz- bergen. There is one enormous sugar-loaf-looking peak, not far from South Cape. It appears to be of granite, and is said to be the highest mountain in Spitzbergen. This is evidently the mountain described by Scoresby, who states its height to be 4500 feet ; although, judging by the eye, I should have estimated it at considerably more. * Allowing one month to reach Tonsberg. 244 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. Many of these mountains have a singularly striking resemblance, on an enormously exagger- ated scale, to the pyramids of Egypt. Some of them have four well-proportioned sides, and slope at a very regular angle of about 45° from top to bottom ; and the lines of stratification being very horizontally disposed and broken short off at the ends, give them exactly the appearance of being composed of gigantic courses of masonry, each smaller than the one below it, until the mountain terminates in an absolute point. Others, again, have the uppermost strata slightly overhanging, or projecting over those immediately below. The 1st of September was a fine calm day, with only occasional gusts of wind from the valleys on the coast. We saw two huge Mysticeti, or "right whales," lazily rolling on the surface and blowing sonorous- ly, at one or two miles' distance. They remained so long above water after each dive that it looked as if there would be no great difficulty in harpoon- ing them, and only our want of proper tackle com- pelled us reluctantly to abstain from making the experiment. The sea here swarms with incredible numbers of minute Medusa?, on which these whales were prob- ably feeding when we saw them. These animalculae also seem to be affording an inexhaustible banquet to gulls and guillemots by the thousand. The lat- ter are the only things we ever take the lives of PARASITICAL GULLS. 245 without intending to make any use of them after- ward ; but they afford such admirable marks for rifle practice, that the slaughter of them is perhaps justifiable, as affording a means to the end. It is very amusing to watch the proceedings of the parasitical gulls, of whom two or three species exist here — Larus parasiticus and Larus glaucus ; the latter is called by the Dutchmen the " Burgo- master, " from his tyrannical and rapacious selfish- ness. Neither of these birds ever seem to take the trouble to pick up any thing for themselves ; but as soon as they observe any other gull in posses- sion of a morsel which he is not able to swallow outright, they dash at him and hunt him through the air, until the victim is obliged to drop what- ever he has secured, and the ravenous burgomaster then appropriates and swallows it himself. I have watched many of these nefarious transactions, and the result is always the same ; the small gull turns, and twists, and doubles, and dodges, screaming all the time so pitifully that one would think he ex- pected to lose his life instead of his dinner ; but at last he is compelled to give up possession, and the burgomaster then ceases to molest him. In the breeding season, these parasitical gulls also pick the eggs out of the nests of the inferior tribes ; but, fortunately for the latter, the number of their persecutors is very limited, or else they would soon get exterminated altogether, and then L. parasiti- cus and L. glaucus would be compelled to have re- 246 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. course to a more reputable mode of life to obtain a subsistence. The sailors are very fond of playing off a certain practical joke on the gulls which are always hover- ing about the ships. The trick is this: you take three or four pieces of sail-twine, of a fathom or so in length, tie them all together in the middle, and to the end of each tightly attach a small piece of blubber, then throw the whole into the sea ; a gull comes and swallows one piece; another then sees there is plenty to spare, and swallows the next; perhaps a third gull takes possession of another ; but as they are all attached to one another by the sail-yarns, whenever they try to fly away, one party or another is perforce compelled to disgorge his share ; and this is continued at the expense of the poor gulls alternately, to the great amusement of the sailors. It seems to me that an attentive study of the Arctic Fauna is capable of throwing great light upon some debated questions in Natural History. I am aware that I am now treading upon very dangerous ground, and that what I say will be se- verely criticised; but I will "take a header" into the deep waters of controversy at once, and unhesi- tatingly avow my belief that an attentive study of the Arctic animals is capable of mightily strength- ening the theory of progressive development, first suggested by the illustrious Lamarck, and since so ably expounded and defended, under somewhat ARCTIC ZOOLOGY. 247 modified forms, by the author of the "Vestiges of Creation," and by Mr. Charles Darwin. There, Messieurs les Critiques, is a chance for you! "Pitch into him; jump down his throat; tear him to pieces ; the Atheist ! the Lamarckian ! the disciple of the atrocious author of the 'Ves- tiges,,,, etc., etc., etc. I acknowledge with humility my presumption in entering upon so profound a question in Natural History ; but, although I make no pretensions to the character of a scientific naturalist, still I have had opportunities such as few have enjoyed, of ob- serving and studying the habits and mode of life of strange animals in many strange countries ; and the more I observe nature, and ponder on the sub- ject, the more do I become convinced that Almighty God always carries out his intentions with regard to the animal creation, not by "direct interposi- tions" of His will, nor by "special fiats of crea- tion," but by the slow and gradual agency of natu- ral causes. It might naturally be expected that in such in- clement regions, and where so little vegetation ex- ists as in the Arctic zone, there must only be very few living animals, and those few of a dwarfish and miserable nature ; but, on the contrary no portion of the surface of the globe more abounds in animal life, from the minute animalculae — which, although too small to be seen in detail without a microscope, are yet in the aggregate so numberless as to discolor I 248 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. the ocean— to the huge walrus and the vast mysti- cetus with his congeners. All this life hangs to- gether from link to link in a beautiful chain : thus the different animalculae prey on one another ; the shrimps and small fishes prey on the larger animal- cule ; the seals and walruses and the numerous sea- fowl prey on the shrimps and the fishes ; the bear preys on the seal and the walrus, and the fox on the sea-fowl. The Polar bear seems to me to be nothing more than a variety of the bears inhabiting Northern Europe, Asia, and America ; and it surely requires no very great stretch of imagination to suppose that this variety was originally created, not as we see him now, but by individuals of Ursus arctos in Siberia, who, finding their means of subsistence running short, and pressed by hunger, ventured on the ice and caught some seals. These individuals would find that they could make a subsistence in this way, and would take up their residence on the shore, and gradually take to a life on the ice. Polar bears in the present day are often carried on the ice to Iceland, and even to within swimming distance of Northern Norway, so there is no im- possibility in supposing that the brown bears, who by my theory were the progenitors of the present white bears, were accidentally driven over to Green- land and Spitzbergen by storms or currents. In- dividual bears of U. arctos are found frequently of a silvery gray color, and such bears are known in PROBABLE ORIGIN OF WHITE BEAR. 249 Norway as "silver bears." Then it stands to rea- son that those individuals who might happen to be palest in color would have the best chance of suc- ceeding in surprising seals, and those who had most external fat would have the best chance of with- standing the cold. The process of natural selection would do the rest, and Ursus arctos would, in the course of a few thousands, or a few millions of years, be transformed into the variety at present known as Ursus maritimus. It may be urged against this that "there is no reason, if my theory is true, why brown bears are not still occasionally taking to a Polar life, catch- ing seals and turning white" (?) The answer is easy ; the ground is already occupied by the varie- ty of bear formed by Nature, acting through the process of natural selection, for catching seals. The seals are so shy that even the existing white bears have difficulty in living, and a brown bear, although he may eke out his means of subsistence by occasion- ally still catching a seal on the shores of Siberia, would have no chance of succeeding in the struggle for life if he were to set off on a seal-hunting ex- pedition, and to enter into competition with his white congeners, who are already formed and fitted by Nature, through countless generations, for that particular mode of life.* * It will be obvious to any one that I follow Mr. Darwin in these remarks ; and although the substance of this chapter was written in Spitzbergen, before the "Origin of Species" was 250 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. I think the appearance and the very existence of the walrus are among the strongest and most in- contestable proofs to be found in the handwriting of Nature throughout all the animal kingdom in support of the theory of creation by slow and gradual causes, and in opposition to that of abrupt, unnatural, and uncalled-for interpositions of the Divine will. There are very few or no animals in the world which seem to me to constitute so clear and well- defined a link between two different and distinct races; and I can hardly understand how any re- flecting and unprejudiced person can attentively study the habits of the walrus when alive, or even attentively examine his skeleton when dead, with- out coming to the conclusion that he forms a plain and unmistakable link between animals inhabiting the land and the cetaceans or whales. The origin of the walrus is a much more difficult and complicated problem to solve than to account for the divergence from the original stock of the white bear; but, nevertheless, I think the walrus must have originated in much the same sort of way as that by which I have attempted to explain the origin of U. rnaritimus ; only, for the creation published, I do not claim any originality for my views ; and I also cheerfully acknowledge that, hut for the publication of that work in connection with the name of so distinguished a naturalist, I never would have ventured to give to the world my own humble opinions on the subject. THE WALRUS. 251 of the walrus I must claim the indulgence of my opponents to grant me a few more millions of that cheapest of all commodities, past years. I require this little extension to enable me to make good my argument, because the walrus differs far more from any known animal, living or extinct, than does the white from the brown bear ; also, I have stated that I conceive the Polar bear to have become a Polar bear by living on seals, and it is therefore to be supposed that the seal and the walrus were originated first. In reference to the fact of a black bear having been seen swimming for hours with his mouth open, catching insects in the water, like a whale, Mr. Darwin states (page 174) that, "Even in so ex- treme a case as this, if the supply of insects were constant, and if better adapted competitors did not already exist in the country, he can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered by natural selec- tion more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale." I see no difficulty in it either, but it is certainly a very extreme case to put, and there is much less difficulty in believing that the thing should have come to pass in a more gradual manner — by steps, as it were. Suppose, then, the case of a bear (or any other large land animal, existing or extinct) living on the borders of the then existing Polar sea. We can 252 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. easily fancy that in the struggle for existence per- petually going on, this bear — or whatever he was — may have been compelled to take to the sea-shore and prey upon shell-fish among other things. At first he would only go into shallow water, but he would become emboldened, by success and habit, to go deeper and deeper ; even in the lifetime of one individual this would happen, and he would ac- quire the habit of digging shells up with his feet or his teeth — at first probably with his feet, but latterly, when he came to picking shells in a foot or two of water, he would require to see what he was about, and he would use his teeth. Natural selec- tion would now come into play, and as those an- imals which had the best and longest teeth would succeed best, so they would have the best chance of transmitting these peculiarities to their descend- ants. The tusks of the walrus are not, as I men- tioned before, a pair of extra teeth, but merely an enlargement or extraordinary development of the eye-teeth, and I think it is easy to conceive that any large carnivorous animal, driven by necessity to subsist on shell-fish under water, would, in a few thousands of generations, acquire such tusks. Also, he would soon learn to dive,* and to hold his breath under water, and from generation to generation he would be able to stay longer below. As he would have very little use for his legs, they * I stated, ante, that we had seen the white bear dive for a short distance just like a walrus. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SEAL AND WALRUS. 253 would soon become abortive as legs, and grow more into the resemblance of fins ; the hind legs would somewhat resemble the tail of a fish, and would do duty for that organ ; so his real tail would almost disappear, as is the case with the seal and the walrus. The legs of the walrus, although almost abortive^ are still legs, and not fins, as he can walk on all four on land or ice. Those of the seal are more abortive still, and the latter can not walk, strictly speaking, but only jerk himself along. Nobody who has seen the anatomy of a whale's paddles can deny that even they are legs and not fins, al- though, of course, only used to propel him in the water after the manner of fins. The resemblance between the seal and the walrus is not in any respect so close, either in their ap- pearance or in their habits, as one would be apt to suppose by looking at the clumsily stuffed specimen of a walrus in the British Museum, or at the few absurd caricatures of this animal which exist. The walrus in every way partakes much more of the nature of land animals than the seal, which again seems more closely allied to the cetaceans. For instance, the walrus can double his hind legs under him and walk upon them like any other beast, while the seal always keeps his hinder extremities stretched backward like the tail of a cetacean. The walrus can not remain under water for nearly so long a period as the seal, neither can he sustain the 254 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. pressure of the water at any thing like the depth to which the great seal can descend : the walrus goes ashore on the beach or rocks, and the Spitzbergen seal, although he basks on ice — both fixed and float- ing — is never known to go on land or even to lie on a half-tide rock; the walrus is gregarious and the great seal solitary, even two seldom being found together ; the young walrus lives with his dam for two seasons,* while the young seals are believed to leave the protection of the old ones at a few days old, and to shift for themselves like young fishes. I believe a young seal is never found along with its dam. The food of the walrus is chiefly obtain- ed by plowing the submarine banks with his tusks, and the seal catches his prey swimming in the water. This evidence would seem to argue that the seal is a farther intermediate link between the walrus and the whale, but I can not presume to hazard any opinion on that point ; he may have diverged from the walrus, or he may have sprung more di- rectly from some other race of animals living or extinct, without the intervention of the walrus. But, in whatsoever way the numerous tribes of seals may have originated, I think that we have strong evidence before us, in the appearance and habits of the great seal and the walrus, to induce us to entertain the belief that one or other of them, * We always found one-year-old calves with their mothers, i. e. calves of the preceding season. DEVELOPMENT. 255 or some allied animal now extinct^ has been the pro- genitor of the whales and other cetaceans. It is needless to recapitulate the description of the manner in which I humbly conceive it possible that these mighty animals might have been devel- oped, as the cases hypothetically put before must have explained my meaning sufficiently; and my utmost hope is that, the suggestions and remarks I have thrown out about the appearance and habits of animals so little known may assist in enabling other better qualified advocates of the great theory of progressive development by means of natural se- lection to work it out to demonstration. This is not a treatise on Natural History, but a narrative of a summer's sporting trip in the Arctic regions, and I have only alluded to this intricate subject in its connection with the curious animals I have described, or I could easily fill a volume with facts corroborative of my views, taken from my own observations of many other animals in widely different parts of the earth. I will content myself with one. In a district of South Africa, not larger than Britain, and not extending beyond ten degrees of latitude, there are well known to exist nearly thirty varieties of antelopes, from the huge eland of six feet in height and 2000 lbs. in weight to the diminu- tive bluebuck of 8 lbs. or 9 lbs. weight and twelve inches high. Some of these varieties are confined to a particu- 256 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. lar range of rocky mountains, the banks of a par- ticular river, or a particular series of flats ; in other places as many as six varieties may be seen at one coup d'oeil, and as many %as ten or twelve in the course of a morning's ride. Of several varieties which inhabit the vast Kalahari Desert, some do not drink above once in three or four days, and others are never known to drink at all. The whole of these antelopes, although differing more or less in size, color, shape, horns, and habits, have strong points of resemblance to one another, first in groups or classes, and then altogether. Some of them are so nearly alike to another variety that no two peo- ple, either among naturalists or among the colonists and inhabitants, seem to be agreed whether these very similar varieties constitute separate species or not. Now, will any man attempt to make me believe that each and all of these numerous varieties (or species) of antelopes were originally brought into being separately and distinctly as we see them now? That one variety was specially created for this pet- ty locality, and another for that ? That there was a special interposition of Providence to create a variety about the outskirts of the desert, which should only drink water once in three or more days, and other varieties which should be absolute non- drinkers ? I think reflection and an attentive observation of nature lead one to a very different conclusion. DR. LIVINGSTONE. 257 Dr. Livingstone has shown that vast portions of South Africa, which formerly used to be well-water- ed, have been for long, and still are, undergoing a rapid desiccation,* and it seems to me that that im- portant fact alone is sufficient to account for many of these antelopes having changed their peculiarities and habits ; and with the latter, through the lapse of countless ages, their size, shape, color, horns, and other distinctions. Nay, farther, I entertain no doubt that they are undergoing these said changes at this moment, but by such a slow and gradual process that it is quite imperceptible in the brief space of human life, or even within the period since natural history began to be studied. A chapter might easily be here written about that singular animal, the wildebeeste, or gnu, which seems to be a tolerably well-defined link between the antelopes and the bovine tribe ; but I will now leave the discussion of the subject to abler pens than mine. * My own personal observation in South Africa abundantly confirms that remark of the doctor's. B 258 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. CHAPTER XVIII. Horn and Bell Sounds. — Ice Fiord. — Pickled Reindeer's Tongues. — Arctic Foxes. — Geology. — Raised Beaches. — Fossil Cannon-balls. — Awful Avalanche. — Begins to get dark at Night. — Reach Haramerfest. — Sell our Cargo. — Take Leave of our Crew. — Sail home. — Equinoctial Gales. — Leith. — " Glut" of Bears in the British Market. — Conclu- sion.— Game List. On passing the mouth of Horn Sound, we en- countered a tremendous blast of wind blowing out of that fiord as out of a funnel. This helped us for a little, and then it fell almost calm again until we came opposite to the entrance of Bell Sound, where we experienced just such another squall from the northeast. Going close-hauled, it was as much as the yacht could do to stand up against it under close-reefed mainsail, foresail, and staysail ; but this squall car- ried us nearly to the mouth of Ice Fiord, where these gusts of wind blowing down through the high valleys were more violent than ever, and were now accompanied with heavy sleety rain. We beat up the fiord in the teeth of this, and anchored in a sheltered bay in the evening of the 2d. The sporting season seemed to be about come to an end ; but we were now obliged to stop here for ICE FIORD. 261 a few days to fill the water-tanks, and gather fire- wood enough for the return voyage. There is no danger in remaining here for at least a week or two to come, as this is said to be the last harbor in Spitzbergen which remains open. The reason for this is that the stream coming round from the east here encounters that portion of the Arctic current which sweeps round the northwest corner of Spitz- bergen, and runs through the channel between Prince Charles1 Island and the main land. Immense flights of geese, both of the gray and brent varieties, winging their way to the south, warn us, however, that it is nearly time to leave the re- gions of the ice. In the numerous fine valleys entering from Ice Fiord we found such quantities of reindeer that we might have loaded the ship with them, if we had been, in the language of "Bell's Life,1' "gluttons" for that description of sport ; but, as we had more venison on board than all hands, including the young bears, could eat in a month, we contented ourselves by picking out a few of the old stags with the best horns we could find. The tongues of the reindeer are particularly de- licious, and we salted a small keg of these for dis- tribution among our friends at home. We have now secured splendid specimens of all the Spitzbergen animals worthy of a sportsman's attention, except the narwhal and the black fox. These are both very rare, and we never had the 262 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. satisfaction of adding the long spiral horn of the one, or the beautiful skin of the other, to our col- lections. On a promontory of sandy beach near our an- chorage there were always a lot of gulls resting, and a small white fox, apparently half mad with hunger, continued the whole day making unavail- ing efforts to stalk them. He would go away for half an hour until he thought the gulls might have gone to sleep, and then come sneaking back to try it again ; but the gulls were always too wide awake for him. There are a great many foxes on this part of Spitzbergen, and it is rather a curious subject to speculate upon how they subsist in winter? All the geese and eider-ducks, and I should imagine also the gulls, leave Spitzbergen in September. There are no hares or other small land animals, and the occasional windfall of a dead deer or seal can surely not maintain the foxes for seven or eight months out of the twelve. Do they then hibernate like the Norway bear, or lay up a secret store of sea-fowl and eggs against the winter ? If the latter, it is one of the most singular cases of in- stinct sharpened by necessity to be found in nature. There are several well-developed raised beaches around some parts of Ice Fiord. In one place I observed three of these, each one about eight or ten feet above the other. Nothing strikes a geological observer in Spitz- FOSSIL CANNON-BALLS. 263 bergen more than the total absence of pebbly beaches. I was especially requested by a distin- guished geologist to direct my attention to this matter, and I did so ; but I nowhere saw, on any part of the coast between Byk Yse Islands and Ice Fiord, nor among the Thousand Islands, any thing approaching to what can be called a pebbly beach. Nine tenths of the coast consists of glacier, rocks, and clay. In some places there are bays with sandy beaches, and in others I have observed great accumulations of coarse rhomboidal gravel, both on the beach and at different elevations, but I never saw a beach composed of rounded, water- worn pebbly stones on any part of the coasts of Spitzbergen. The mountains about this fiord are composed of a friable, crumbling limestone, which in great part has a sort of brown tinge, as if impregnated with oxide of iron. They are perfectly chock-full of fossils, so much so as to look as if they were actu- ally composed of fossils in some places. I gather- ed many specimens, and I also picked up, in the bed of a torrent, three stones so exactly spherical, and so highly ferruginous-looking, that my Petropaulauski man-of-warVman stoutly maintained that if the "other stones" I gave him to carry were the fossils of clams and cockles, these must undoubtedly be the fossils of cannon-shot of different calibres. There is a good walrus-boat lying on the beach in a small bay here. This boat was found two 264 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. years ago floating bottom up, and with two of the harpoon-lines broken, from which it is concluded that a walrus had upset her and drowned the crew. On the fourth, while we were busy on deck mak- ing preparations to depart, we saw a tremendous avalanche of rocks, ice, and earth descend from the face of a steep mountain three or four miles distant. I should think the mass consisted of several mil- lions of tons, and the terrific roar and splash with which it descended into the sea baffle all attempts at description. It is fortunate we were not an- chored underneath it at the time. We got the two heavy boats in on deck, and se- cured them firmly in case of bad weather, and made every thing else as snug as possible for the return voyage. "We have some difficulty in stowing the venison, of which 160 fat quarters now encumber the deck. At an average of 40 lbs. a quarter, this amounted to 6400 lbs. or about three tons of meat ; and the yacht being hung round with it in every possible place, it gives her the appearance of a butcher's shop, full of prize oxen, at Christmas. Early in the morning of the 5th of September we got the anchor up, and bade adieu, with profound regret and heartfelt reluctance, to the gloomy "fiords and enchanting ice-floes of Spitzbergen. As those desolate shores faded from our view, I repeated to myself the sublime lines of Longfellow,* • Discoverer of the North Cape. CROSS TO HAMMERFEST. 265 M There we hunted the walrus, the narwhal and the seal. Aha ! 'twas a noble game : And like the lightning's flame Flew our harpoons of steel." As we sailed down the west coast we had much calm, and the weather was actually milder than we had had it all the summer. There is evidently an enormous difference of climate between this part of Spitzbergen and the east coast — caused, no doubt, by the great extent of glacier and the vast fields of floating ice in the more immediate vicinity of the latter, as well as by the presence of the fag-end of the Gulf Stream, before alluded to, on this coast. It begins to get a little darkish now from ten till two in the night. One could not have seen to shoot a seal at 10 30 on the 6th. We lighted the cabin and binnacle lamps for the first time to-night at 10 o'clock ; and so rapid is the decline of the sun in those latitudes when he once commences to go below the horizon, that on the 7th we had to light them two hours earlier, although we have not made much southing since yesterday. We had light winds and mild weather all the way across, and only cast anchor in Hammerfest harbor at dusk on the evening of the 11th. To 'our great surprise and annoyance, we found that the "Anna Louisa" had only made her num- ber twelve hours before us. We found a great accumulation of letters and newspapers, and read nearly all night. 266 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. On the 12th we got the sloop unloaded and sold the cargo. Owing to the badness of the casks with which we had been provided, a great deal of our blubber was damaged and lost. The price was also very low — as seems always to be the case somehow or other whenever one has any thing to sell — but still we realized a sum which went a long way toward paying our expenses ; in addition to which we kept the young bears, the six bearskins, and all the ivory. The 13th and 14th were occupied in getting a stout cage, lined with old iron hoops, made for the bears, settling accounts with our agents, paying off the crew of the sloop, and delivering that sluggish and odoriferous little tub over to her owners. The crew of the sloop seemed sorry to part with us, and the regret was mutual, for, with one excep- tion, I never met with a more hard-working, docile, uncomplaining, and good-humored lot of fellows than skyppar and crew proved themselves to be. Although their wages were fully equal in amount to what they would have received on the usual prin- ciple of getting for themselves one third of the cargo, we gave the skyppar a handsome additional gratui- ty, and each of the men (with the exception of the individual above alluded to) a small one. We also told them to divide between them all the bread and other provisions which were left over, but the latter gift unfortunately proved a very "bone of conten- tion," and gave rise to a furious dispute among ARRIVAL AT LEITH. 267 them. The men who had houses and families wished a division of the actual victuals (the "ipsa corpora, " as the Rev. Mr. calls the oatmeal which I have annually the honor of paying him for), whereas the men who lived en garcon contend- ed that the obvious intentions of the munificent donors had been that the provisions should be sold en masse, and the proceeds then divided with a view to their immediate convertibility into brandy. As we declined to give any decision on this delicate point, the last we heard of it was, that they had called in the intervention of the merchants who had acted as our agents, and I think it not improb- able that these gentlemen settled the matter some- what after the manner in which the oyster of the fable was partitioned by the referee in that notable case. We sailed on the 15th, and as we had experienced northeast winds all the way from Leith to Ham- merfest, it was quite to be expected in the nature of things that we should have southwest ones all the way back. We did so, and in addition we had an awful hustling from the equinoctial gales in the end of the month. "We religiously avoided Lerwick this time, for fear the famishing population might storm the yacht to get possession of our cargo of venison, and at last cast anchor in Leith Roads on Sunday, the 2d of October. For the first few days the climate of Scotland seemed oppressively hot, and I could sympathize 268 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. with the feelings of the young bears, who appeared ready to melt into oil at this unwonted temper- ature. With the view of disposing of these interesting animals, I entered into correspondence with nearly every wild-beast-keeper and secretary of Zoological Gardens in the United Kingdom, but, as usual, the "British market was quite overstocked." There was a "glut" of bears, in fact. It then occurred to me that I could not put them to better account than by turning them out in a large wood at home, and inviting my friends and neighbors to enjoy the Scandinavian diversion of a "shall ;" but the prob- able difficulty of obtaining heaters occurred to me as one objection, and the possibility of being brought in for heavy game damages as another ; so eventu- ally I disposed of them to M. le Directeur of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, and I wish his im- perial majesty joy of his purchase. I had the satisfaction of seeing them in that establishment some months later, considerably grown, but their naturally amiable dispositions not improved by their being confined in one of the warm, dry dens used for the tropical Carnivora. They did not, like the lion in the story, recog- nize and welcome their old shipmate with trans- ports of joy. In conclusion, I beg to direct attention to the fol- lowing fac-simile of an engraving executed by Lord David Kennedy on one of the cabin-beams of the GAME-LIST. 200 "Anna Louisa," as it contains a concise summary of our game-list. a -G cj LORD DAVID KENNEDY and JAMES LAMONT Hired this Sloop ANNA LOUISA, not A 1, In the Summer of the Year 1859, And killed in SPITZBERGEN 46 WALRUSES, 88 SEALS, 8 POLAR BEARS, 1 WHITE WHALE, 61 REINDEER. TOTAL, 204 HEAD. ID N.B. — In addition to the above, we sunk and lost about 20 Walruses and 40 Seals. APPENDIX. APPENDIX. A LIST OF THE SPECIMENS OF ROCKS, FOSSILS, ANIMALS, Ac, SENT TO THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY AND NOW IN THEIR MUSEUM. From Black Point. — Grayish, fine-grained, laminated sand- stone, sometimes micaceous. Brownish, fine-grained, micaceous, shaly sandstone, weather- ing white. Pebbles of hard coal. Brownish-gray limestone, with Numla, Aviculopecten, and Spirifer. Gray limestone with calcareous veins. With a trace of calamite ? Fossil wood with attached coaly matter. From Thousand Islands. — More or less rounded fragments of Compact red syenitic rock. Gray compact silicious limestone with corals, Avicidopecten> StreptorhynchiiSy &c. Brownish argillaceous rock. Yellowish fossiliferous silicious limestone. White fossiliferous limestone. Black flint with chalcedonic vein. White flint or chert. Purplish semitransparent quartz rock. Greenstone. Thin-bedded, gray, compact, silicio-argillaceous rock, with a large Avicul&pecten. s 274 APPENDIX. Hard compact sandstone. Red, highly silicious limestone. Greenstone, coarse-grained, with weathered face. From Ryk-Yse Islands. — Rounded fragments of gray compact limestone with FenestellcB and corals. From Ice Sound. — Fine-grained, compact, dark gray sand- stone, weathering ferruginous. Ferruginous nodules (exfoliating) of the size of cannon halls. From Island, Bell Sound. — Weathered fragment of argillo-si- licious dark gray rock, with Fenestella and corals. Hard reddish ferruginous rock, with pebbles of Lydian stone. Fossils, from 200 feet above the sea, and 350 yards inland. (See Mr. Salter's Appendix.) Brownish-gray, micaceous, compact, fine-grained sandstone pebbles, with trace of the cast of an Aviculopecten f From Bell Sound. — Fossils from 400 feet above the sea level. (See Mr. Salter's Appendix.) From Moraine in Deeva Bay. — Brown claystone, weathering reddish-purple. Different Localities. Ferruginous nodule, small. Hard ferruginous sandstone with small ferruginous nodule. Silicious conglomerate. Boulder of conglomerate, or coarse pebbly grit ; pebbles of white and dark gray quartz and Lydian stone, cement cal- careous. "White quartz rock. Stem-like piece of brownish fine-grained sandstone (? cast of a ripple-mark). APPENDIX. 275 Light-gray friable sandstone. Dark-gray mudstone (calcareo-argillaceous) with impression of shell. Water-worn fragment of tortuously laminated calcareous slate. Pebble of gray argillaceous limestone with calc-spar vein. Bouldered piece of gray silicious limestone with Productus and corals. Gray silicious limestone with Orthis and Productus, with weathered surface. White crystalline limestone with Spirifer cristatus and cor- als, having a weathered surface. White silicious limestone with corals, EncHnibes, and shells. Black silicious limestone with calcareous veins. Weathered fragment of white encrinital chert with coals, Bryozoa (?), and Productus. Black flint with whitish mottlings, splinters. Red silicious limestone with a rounded, weathered surface. Probably from the Thousand Islands. (Islands to the south-east ?) Weathered fragment of white limestone with Productus, Spirifer alatus, and a large fo- liaceous coral (Stenopora). Recent Shells (determined by S. P. Woodwaed, Esq., F.G.S.). 1. From the Thousand Isles. Buccinum undatum, var. (cyaneum??). 2. From Bell Sound, at about high-water mark. Fusus despectus, L., var. {=F borealis, Philippi). Buccinum glaciate, L. (=B. angulosum=B. polare, Beck). Margarita undulata (= Grcenlandica) inside a Buccinum. Buccinum scalariforme? Balanus crenatus, var. Scoticus, probably. Fusus Kroyeri, Moller. 276 APPENDIX. Cardium Islandicum (=ciliatum). Cardium Groenlandicum (broken). (very fine). Saxicava arctica. Mya Uddevallensis (truncata, var.). Astarte borealis, Chemn., var. (=semisicteata, Leach; —lac- tea, Broderip). Mya truncata, var. Uddevallensis. Pecten Islandicus. Nullipore, with Saxioava. 3. From Bell Sound, at about l£ to 2 miles inland, and 400 or 500 feet above the sea level. Buccinum glaciale (l£ to 2 miles inland, 400 and 500 feet high). 4. From the Moraine of a glacier in Deeva Bay. Astarte borealis (var. semisulcata). compressa, Mont., var. striata. Mya truncata, var. Uddevallensis. Bones. 1. Fragment of vertebra of Whale, rotten. Bell Sound. Half a mile from the sea. 100 feet above the sea. 2. Fragment of bone. Haifa mile from the sea at Bell Sound. 100 feet above the sea. 3. Cranium of a small Delphinopterus teucas (White Whale or Beluga). Bell Sound. 300 yards from the sea. 80 feet above the sea. 4. Anterior rib of a Whale. Bell Sound. 500 yards from the sea. 80 feet high. 5. Small lumbar vertebra of Beluga (?) Bell Sound. Near- ly buried at *70 feet above high-tide mark. 6. Fragment of bone of Whale. Bell Sound. Buried in bank 50 feet above the sea. APPENDIX. 277 7. Half a caudal vertebra of Whale. Bakena mysticetus (?) Bell Sound. A little above high-water mark. 8. Caudal vertebra of Whale. Found among the boulders at high-water mark. Colored ferruginous. 9. Small cervical vertebra of Beluga ? 10. Tibia and fibula of hind left leg of a Walrus. 11. Large caudal vertebra of Whale. 12. Part of lower jaw of Whale. Walter Thymen's Straits. Half a mile from the sea, and 40 feet above sea level. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society. Description of the Gravels from Spitzbebgen'. By J. Pbest- wich, Esq., F.G.S. 1. Gravel from Bell Sound, 60 feet above high-water mark. Gray gravel of small subangular fragments of dark-gray argil- laceous and quartzose slaty rocks, some portions calcareous, and a few fragments of gray sandstone, mixed with a small proportion of earth. None of the fragments are above two ounces in weight, the bulk being of small size (seventy to the ounce). Among these subangular fragments there are, however, a few small round pebbles of a dark-gray limestone, and a few perfectly angular fragments of slate. There are no shells, nor any characters on any of the frag- ments in the gravel to indicate a beach-origin. The mass, in fact, looks much more like the smaller fragments of a moraine. None of the fragments, however, are scratched or striated. 2. Gravel from Bell Sound, 20 feet above high-water. Dark- colored grit, clean and uniform in texture, consisting of small subangular fragments of a black hornblende slate (like that of No. 4) about the size of cress-seed, with a very few flattish pebbles of the size of peas, and still fewer rounded pebbles of the size of marbles. There are no fragments of shells. 3. Gravel from an island in Bell Sound, a little above high- water. Small grayish-green gravel of flat angular fragments of greenish mica slate, with a few pieces of quartz. None of 278 APPENDIX. the fragments are an ounce in weight. The bulk consists of pieces of about thirty to the ounce. No matrix of any sort. No fragments of shells. This gravel has the appearance of rock debris in situ. 4. Gravel from Bell Sound, halfway between high and low water. Ordinary clean and well-worn small beach-shingle, the smaller fragments being more or less subangular, and the larger ones more or less rounded : no fragments above three quarters of an ounce in weight; and the bulk 117 to the ounce. It is composed mostly of compact black hornblende slate (like that of No. 2), compact gray sandstone, and some gray limestone and a very little quartz. There are no shells nor scratched pebbles. It is much like the shingle of parts of our own coast. 5. Gravel from Bell Sound, low-water anchorage. Suban- gular small fragments of micaceous slates, with a few flat an- gular fragments of limestone. Not one well-rounded pebble ; few even of the fragments are much worn. There are no shells. This looks much like the small debris in an old slate quarry. Note on the Fossils from Spitzbergen. By J. W. Salter, Esq., F.G.S. The specimens of fossils brought by Mr. Lamont are chiefly from three localities, viz. : It Bell Sound (at 400 feet above the sea level), western side of the island ; 2. Island in Bell Sound (at 200 feet above the sea, and 350 yards from the shore) ; and, 3. Black Point, near the S.E. angle of Spitzbergen, close to which are the Thousand Isles. From Bell Sound only a few species were collected ; and these are the same as those from the small island in the same Sound. One is a large Productus, which I can not identify completely with any British species. It may be a large varie- APPENDIX. 279 ty of one of our common shells, P. semireticulatus, or even a form of P. Costatus. In any case it is of a Carboniferous type. The specimens from the island in Bell Sound are much more numerous ; and in a gray limestone we have, 1. Athyris or Spirifer, a large smooth species, nearly 3 inches across, without any definite hinge-line, and with very strong ventral muscular impressions. The shell is much de- pressed. 2. Productus costatus, Sowerby, very large, and deeply bi- lobed. Abundant. 3. Productus, the large striate species above mentioned. 4. P. Humboldtii, D'Orbigny, two or three specimens. 5. P. mammatus, Keyserling (?), or an allied species, with- out large scattering spines. This species occurs in Arctic America, having been brought by Captain Belcher from the point opposite Exmouth Island. It is the P. Leplayii of De Koninck's paper on the Fossils from Spitzbergen, but not, I think, of De Verneuil, who described that species in " Russia in Europe." Von Buch quotes the Productus giganteus from the South Cape and from Bell Sound : this is not noticed at all in Prof. Koninck's list (1849, op. cit., p. 633). 6. Camarophoria, a large species, not unlike in shape to the RhynchoneUa acuminata of the Carboniferous limestone, but ribbed throughout. 7. Spirifer Keilhavii, Von Buch. Several specimens. This, more than any other shell, tends to connect the Spitzbergen formation with surrounding districts. Sp. Keilhavii was de- scribed in the Berlin Trans, for May, 1846. The specimens were brought home by Keilhau from the rocks of Bear Island, in 74° 30' N". lat., half way between Norway and Spitzbergen. In the same paper Von Buch notices that the locality of Bell Sound had been visited by French naturalists (M. Robert and the Scientific Commission which explored these seas in 1839), and that the same Producti and Spirifer (S. Keilhavii) were 280 APPENDIX. found there which occurred at Bear Island. And, inasmuch as the Producti are the common British species P. giga?tieus and P. Cora, there can be no doubt whatever of the formation to which Spirifer Keilhavii belongs. Count Keyserling de- scribed a variety of it from Petschora Land under another name ; and in the Appendix to Belcher's " Last of the Arctic Voyages" I have figured and described this shell from the Car- boniferous rocks of North Albert Land — Captain Belcher's farthest point. Numerous Producti occurred with it, two of which, if not more, are identical with the Spitzbergen species. I notice this more particularly, because in two communications to the Royal Academy of Brussels (Bulletin, vols. xiii. and xiv.) Prof, de Koninck has described the Bell Sound fossils as Permian, and not Carboniferous species, and has given figures of several of them. In a short resume of the Arctic Geology read by myself to the British Association, 1855, 1 have used this fact as illustrative of the regularity of the great Arctic basin of Palaeozoic rocks (Trans. Sect., p. 211). One species only which appears to me of Permian date oc- curs in a loose block (without definite locality), and will be presently noticed. It would be somewhat remarkable if all the specimens brought home by M. Robert should prove to be Permian, while those from the same locality before us are mostly of Carboniferous type. The larger and more conspicuous shells do not seem to have been met with by M. Robert in his voyage. 8. Fenestella, two species, one with very large meshes. 9. Sponges (?) ; large, stem-like and cake-like in shape. Specimens without definite localities : 1 0. Spirifer cristatus, Schloth. S. octoplieatus of the mount- ain limestone is now regarded as the same species. 11. Streptorhynchus crenistria, or an allied form. 12. Zaphrentis Ovibos, Salter (?). Probably an Arctic spe- cies. 13. Stenopora ; a large branched species, like JS. Tasman- iensis of Lonsdale. This occurs at Bell Sound also. APPENDIX. 281 14. Syringopora, large fragments. 15. A new genus, in all probability of the Fenestellidaz, con- sisting of thick stems branching regularly from opposite sides, the smaller branches also opposite, and coalescing also with their neighbors so as to form a quadrangular net-work. But for this coalescence it might be a gigantic Thamniscm or Ich- thyorhachis. As the poriferous face is not seen, it is better not to give a new generic name. From Black Point, in shaly beds, which seem to be associ- ated with the coal, slabs were obtained with numerous shells and some fragments of plants. 16. ivMcwfa, abundant ; and among these is a small 17. Aviculopecten, and a Spirifer with broad ribs. 18. Aviculopecten. A large species (looking like the A. papyraceus of our own coal-shales magnified), found in the gravel among the Thousand Isles ; it probably came from these beds. i A weathered block of white limestone, probably from the islands on the southeastern side of Spitzbergen,* contains the only truly Permian species which I have seen among these specimens, viz., 19. Spirifer alatus, Schloth., a common fossil of the Zech- stein. 20. Productus, a small species. (P. Horridus of De Ko- ninck's list, but apparently too deeply lobed.) 21. Stenopora, a large foliaceous flattened species. JSpirifer octoplicatus (cristatus), above mentioned, also oc- * With regard to this specimen, I stated, in reply to an inquiry on the subject, "The loose block of white limestone to which you refer as 'having a Permian aspect' was, if I mistake not, picked up on one of the islands to the S.E. of Edge's Land. It is unlike any rock I saw in situ ; and, as it is evidently a traveled block, I think it not improbable that it does not belong to Spitzbergen at all, but may have been transported by the drift-ice from Commander Gillies's Land, or some other unknown country to the north- east."—April 21, I860.— J. L. 282 APPENDIX. curs in similar whitish limestone. These may possibly have all come from the locality whence M. Robert's original speci- mens were found ; but it would appear that they are not by any means the prevailing fossils of the island. The general aspect of the fossils is unquestionably carbon- iferous, and some of the species have a wide diffusion. Pro- ductus costatus ranges from India to the Mississippi, and P. semireticulatus (which I think is only a variety of the same species) has even a wider range.* P. Humboldtii is found in Russia and South America. Our P. mammatus f is probably distinct from the Russian species, but it is, at all events, the same as one in Captain Belcher's collection.! The size of the fossils, both of the shells and Bryozoa, is re- markable, and, taken in conjunction with the presence of large land-plants in the coal, would seem to indicate a great decrease of temperature in the Arctic region since the Carboniferous period. The shells are larger, too, than the corresponding species in our own mountain limestone. J * To Australia (M'Coy). t It is closely and finely striate, and has spines along the hinge-line only. % Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society. THE END. STANDARD LIBRARY WORKS II l:l IMIl.n r. V HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. W Harper & Brothers will send either of the following Works by Mall, postage prepaid (for any distance In the United States under 3000 miles), on receipt of the Money. 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