222 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAr. 



Krusentern's adventurous journey across the Kara Sea is one 

 of the many proofs that a Polar navigator ought above every- 

 thing to avoid being beset. The very circumstance that the 

 ice-field, in which he became fixed in the neighbourhood of 

 Yugor Schar, could drift across to the east coast of the Kara 

 Sea, shows that it was for the most part open, and that a 

 steamer or a good sailing-vessel that year, and probably also 

 the preceding, might very readily have reached the mouth of 

 the Ob or the Yenisej. The narrative of von Krusenstern's 

 journey is besides the first complete sketch we have of a passage 

 from west to east over the Kara Sea. Little idea could any one 

 then have that within a single decade a number of vessels 

 should sail free and unhindered along this route. 



Soon after the two voyages I have described above, and 

 before they became generally known in the geographical litera- 

 ture of Western Europe, a new era began in the navigation of 

 the Kara Sea, which was brought about by the Norwegian 

 hunters being compelled to seek for new fields of sport on and 

 beyond Novaya Zemlya. 



The history of the Spitzbergen hunting has not yet been 

 written in a satisfactory way, and is in many respects very 

 obscure. It is supposed that after the discovery of Spitzbergen 

 in 1596 by Barents, the hunting in the Polar Seas began during 

 Bennet's first voyage in 1603, and that the whale-fishing was 

 introduced by JoNAS PoOLE in 1610. But already in the follow- 

 ing year Poole, whose vessel was then wrecked on the west coast 

 of Spitzbergen, found in Horn Sound a ship from Hull, to 

 which he gave charge of saving his cargo, and two years after 

 the English were compelled, in order to keep foreigners from 

 the fishing field they wished to monopolise, to send out six 

 men-of-war, which found there eight Spanish, and a number of 

 Dutch and French vessels (Furchas, iii. pp. 462, 716, &c.). 

 Even in our days the accounts of new sources of wealth do not 

 spread so speedily as in this case, unless, along with the history 

 of the discovery which was written by Hakluyt, Purchas, De 

 Veer, &c., there had been an unknown history of discovery and 

 the whale-fishing, of which it may still be possible to collect 

 some particulars from the archives of San Sebastian, Dunkirk, 

 Hull, and other ports. 



However this may be, it is certain that the English and 

 Dutch North-east voyages gave origin to a whale-fishery in the 

 sea round Spitzbergen, which increased by many millions the 

 national wealth of these rich commercial states. The fishing 

 went on at first immediately along the coasts, from which, 

 however, the whales were soon driven, so that the whale-fishers 

 had to seek new fishing-grounds, first farther out to sea between 

 Spitzbergen and Greenland, then in Davis' Strait, and finally in 



