SMEERENBERG 25 



been drawn hot from the oven. In fact, hot rolls and 

 every delicacy could be had in Smeerenberg, which the 

 Dutch averred was as flourishing as Batavia, founded 

 by them a few years before. And when winter was 

 just about due every man and woman went back to 

 Holland. But the life of Smeerenberg was a short 

 and a merry one, for in 1640 the shore fisheries were 

 failing, and a year or so afterwards the lingerers of its 

 last season left it for good, clearing out from its houses 

 of brick and wood, demolishing its furnaces, removing 

 its copper cauldrons and coolers and casks and every- 

 thing that could be taken away, and leaving it in 

 desolation to be occupied in the next and subsequent 

 summers by polar bears. 



Like all seaside resorts it had its rival. Close by is 

 the Cookery-of-Haarlem, abandoned at the same time, 

 but rather more hurriedly. When Martens went there 

 on the 15th of July, 1671, he found four houses still 

 standing, in one of which were " several barrels or 

 kardels that were quite decayed, the ice standing in 

 the same shape the vessels had been made of : an anvil, 

 smith's tongs, and other tools belonging to the cookery, 

 were frozen up in the ice ; the kettle was still standing 

 as it was set, and the wooden troughs stood by it." 

 Behind these houses "are high mountains," he con- 

 tinues, " if one climbeth upon these, as we do on others, 

 and doth not mark every step with chalk, one doth not 

 know how to get down again : when you go up you 

 think it to be very easy to be down ; but when you 

 descend it is very difficult and dangerous, so that many 

 have fallen and lost their lives." Absurd as this chalk- 

 ing of the steps may seem, there have been many who 



