4 SPITSBERGEN chap, i 



busy and populous place during the summer months. Build- 

 ings were set up for habitation and blubber-boiling. Crowds 

 of people assembled at the various centres. As many as 

 18,000 are stated to have made Smeerenburg at one time the 

 centre of their operations. By the middle of the seventeenth 

 century the whale industry was already declining, and a 

 few years later Smeerenburg was a vanishing ruin. 



Whalers, however, continued to visit Spitsbergen with 

 diminishing frequency till about the year 1830 or even later. 

 When they no longer came to seek whales or boil blubber, 

 they landed for water, or to secure supplies of fresh meat 

 from the quantity of easily obtained reindeer found in all the 

 fertile localities. The walrus and seal industries for some time 

 outlasted that of whaling, but now walruses have become 

 practically extinct in the accessible parts of Spitsbergen. 

 The only walruses we saw were on the edge of the ice- 

 pack in Olga Strait. 



About the middle of the eighteenth century many Russian 

 trappers from the Arkangel district made the archipelago 

 the scene of their activity. They used to spend the winter 

 there, building for themselves scattered huts, the ruins of 

 which are still discoverable. At first they also did very well, 

 but in time they exhausted the supply of bears and foxes 

 which formed the staple of their catch. About 1830 the last 

 of the Russians disappeared to return no more. 



They in their turn were succeeded by Norwegians, who 

 now alone make these islands and waters the home of any 

 industry. Sloops and cutters from Hammerfest and Tromso 

 still visit Spitsbergen in small and perhaps decreasing number, 

 and there endeavour to secure a mixed cargo of whatever 

 they can take, eider-down, seals, white whales, sharks' livers, 

 a bear or two, perhaps a few walruses from North-East Land, 

 but chiefly reindeer, the meat of which is sold in Norway at 

 a good price. Thus Dutchmen, Englishmen, Germans, Bis- 



