154 Captain Sabine on the 



of the ice at the level of the ocean. It is hardly necessary to 

 add, that the latter operation would be unembarrassed by the ine- 

 qualities of surface, and uncertain temperature of the apparatus, 

 which occasion so much trouble, and require so much precaution 

 in the usual determination of a base. 



" The extent of the arc in the direction of the meridian, between 

 the southern shores of Spitzbergen and the islands on its northern 

 coast in the eighty-first degree of latitude, is between four and five 

 degrees. At the period of the celebrity of Spitzbergen as a fishing 

 station, in the middle of the seventeenth century, when above 

 200 vessels, manned by 10 or 12,000 seamen, annually resorted 

 to its vicinity, and frequented its harbours for the purposes of 

 boiling oil, and when the harbours were divided by convention 

 amongst the vessels in consequence of their numbers, according 

 to the nation and towns to which they belonged, all parts of the 

 coast were known to and visited by the hardy and enterprising 

 Dutch and German seamen, by whom the fishery was then princi- 

 pally conducted. The whales have long since deserted the haunts 

 which their kind had enjoyed for ages before in unmolested secu- 

 rity, and have sought retreats less accessible to man ; the graves, 

 which occupy every level spot around the harbours, contain the 

 only and in that climate the almost imperishable memorials of the 

 once busy scene, which has reverted to its original solitude ; even 

 the accidental presence of a whaling ship in the western harbours 

 is an event of rare occurrence *, and it is probable that more than 

 half a century has elapsed since any vessel has passed to the 

 North-eastern shores ; it is not surprising, therefore, that the de- 

 lineation of land, represented in the charts of the period when 

 Spitzbergen was so greatly frequented as existing to the East of 

 the seven islands, and to extend in a northerly direction far into 

 the eighty-second parallel, should neither have been established 

 nor disproved by modern authorities ; those persons who have had 

 opportunities of becoming acquainted, by examination on the spot, 

 with the remarkable correctness of the older charts in general, in 

 the insertion and in the relative position (when not separated by 

 much extent of ocean) of lands then recently discovered, will 

 hesitate too hastily to reject their testimony, until it has been sa- 

 tisfactorily disproved ; should land exist as represented in the 

 charts of the period alluded to, even though not visible from 



* During the Griper's stay of three weeks in the neighbourhood of the har- 

 bour of principal resort in earlier times, and in the middle of the fishing sea- 

 son, not a single whale fish or whaling ship were seen. The only vessels 

 which now frequent the shores of Spitzbergen, are Norwegian sloops in quest 

 of sea-horses and eider down. Their visits have been hitherto confined to the 

 fiords and the islands on the southern and western coasts ; they arrive early 

 in March, and remain as late as November, making occasionally three voy- 

 ages in a season. 



