JAN MAYEN ISLAND. 157 



They had apparatus for the manufacture of oil, toge- 

 ther with tents, cooperages and warehouses, erected 

 in South Bay, Hooberg, Wood Bay, English Bay, 

 West Cross Cove, and East Cross Cove. In South 

 Bay, the Dutch once suffered the loss of three 1?^ 

 their tents or huts, nine oil vessels, and thirteen 

 boats, from the ground on which they stood being 

 washed away by the sea. Mary Muss Bay, was the 

 first place where oil w^as manufactured in the island, 

 and was so called after an industrious woman of 

 that name belonging to Rotterdam, who sent the 

 first sliip out for the purpose of reducing the blub- 

 ber which might be taken, into oil on the spot. 

 Three places on this island, called Wood Bay, 

 Great Wood Bay, and Little Wood Bay, received 

 their names from the great quantity of drift-wood 

 found in them. 



The western navigation of Jan Maycn is prefer- 

 red to the eastern, as being less incumbered with 

 ice, and less subject to calms, squalls and whirl- 

 winds, which are often encountered on passing to 

 the eastward of Beercnberg. The whole island is 

 generally surrounded with ice in the spring of the 

 year ; but in the autumn, or even in summer, the 

 ice sometimes sets so far to the westward, that it is 

 not visible from any part of the land. 



Though the Dutch, as well as the whalers of 

 Hull, were, in the early part of the seventeenth 

 century, annual visitants to the island of Jan Mayen, 

 yet we have no account or description of it, except 



