CHAPTER II 

 SPITSBERGEN 



(continued) 



The summer town of Smeerenberg Himkoff winters in North East Land 

 Phipps reaches 80 48' Scoresby the elder reaches 81 30' Scoresby the 

 younger Voyage of the Dorothea and Trent under Buchan and Franklin 

 Parry reaches 82 45' Torell and Nordenskiold Carlsen sails round 

 Spitsbergen Swedish North Polar expedition under Nordenskiold 

 Lament The Diana coal mine Leigh Smith Conway. 



THIS wintering of the Salutation men occurred 

 when the Spitsbergen fisheries were most flourish- 

 ing, the prosperity continuing for seven more years. 

 So lucrative was the trade that on Amsterdam Island 

 under Hakluyt Headland, within fifteen miles of 80 

 north latitude, about as far from the North Pole as 

 St. Malo is from John o' Groat's, there sprang up as 

 a summer resort the Dutch village of Smeerenberg. 

 Such was the bustle produced by the yearly visit of 

 two or three hundred double-manned vessels, contain- 

 ing from twelve thousand to eighteen thousand men, 

 that this village of the farthest north was as busy as a 

 manufacturing town. The incitement of prices pro- 

 portionate to the latitude attracted hundreds of annual 

 settlers, who throve on the sale of brandy, wine, 

 tobacco, and sundries to the whale-fishers in shops of 

 all varieties, including bakehouses, where the blowing 

 of a horn let the sailors know that the bread had just 



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