160 EARLY ATTEMPTS AT COLONIZATION. 



of brick buildings, and a great many coffins, 

 of which we counted upwards of a thousand 

 upon the islands of Amsterdam, the Norways, 

 and the low lands about Smeerenburg. Out of 

 this number of graves a few only bore English 

 inscriptions, the others were principally Dutch. 

 By the dates on the head-boards, it appeared 

 that the greater part had been deposited on 

 the shore about the middle of the eighteenth 

 century. The interment of Dutch subjects, how- 

 ever, is not confined to these islands, for Sir 

 Edward Parry found them as far to the eastward 

 as Treurenburg Bay, where he discovered thirty 

 coffins upon a point of land on the north side of 

 that harbour bearing Dutch inscriptions, from 

 which it appeared that the dates nearly corre- 

 sponded with those above-mentioned. 



We are told in various publications that at- 

 tempts have been repeatedly made to form esta- 

 blishments upon Spitzbergen for the purpose of 

 reducing the whale blubber to oil on the spot, 

 and of collecting the skins of bears, foxes, and 

 walruses ; but the individuals upon whom the 

 experiments of colonization were made gene- 

 rally fell victims to that dreadful malady the 

 scurvy, which the climate of Spitzbergen seems 

 particularly calculated to promote. 



A few years after the commencement of the 



