1630,-1634.] CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY. 47 



ducing the blubber into oil, together with suitable 

 erections for performing this operation. The erec- 

 tions of the Dutch were the most considerable ; but 

 even the English, though their shipping in the 

 trade had never been very numerous, had, we learn, 

 several substantial buildings on the margin of Ry- 

 nier's River in Bell Sound ; among which, were a 

 a cooperage firmly built of timber, and roofed witli 

 Flemish tiles, 80 feet in length and about 50 in 

 breadth ; a considerable boilers' lodging-house ; and 

 boiling furnaces with chimneys of brick*. 



The adventurers in the whale-fishery, conceiving 

 that considerable advantages might be derived, 

 could Spitzbergen be resorted to as a permanent re- 

 sidence, were desirous of ascertaining the possibili- 

 ty of the human species subsisting throughout the 

 winter in this inhospitable climate. The English 

 merchants, it appears, offered considerable rewards, 

 together with the supply of every requisite for such 

 an undertaking, to any person who would volunteer 

 to pass the winter on any part of Spitzbergen ; but 

 not one was found sufficiently hardy to undertake 

 the hazardous experiment. Such, indeed, was the 



* These buildings were erected originally by the " Fle- 

 " mings, in the time of their trading liither/' as appears from 

 Pelham's " Miraculous Preservation and Deliverance of Eight 

 " Englishmen, left by mischance in Greenland l630/' publish- 

 ed in Churchill's Collection, vol. iv. p. 750. ; and a verbatim 

 copy in " Clarke's Naufragia," vol. ii. p. lf)3,-206. 



