224 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap. 



wintering.' But the hunting voyages of the Russians to Spitz- 

 bergen have also long ceased. The last voyage thither took 

 place in 1851-52, and had a very unfortunate issue for most of 

 those who took part in it, twelve men dying out of twenty. On 

 the other hand, the Norwegian voyages to Spitzbergen for the 

 seal and walrus-hunting, begun in the end of last century, still 

 go on. Their history, too, is, even here in the North, very 

 incompletely known, at least to 1858, when the Swedish scien- 

 tific expeditions began regularly to visit those regions, and to 

 include in the narratives of their voyages more or less complete 

 accounts of the Norwegian hunting, an example that has since 

 been followed, though by no means very completely or systema- 

 tically, by the editors of Norwegian and foreign journals, in 

 the first place by Petermann's Mittheilungen.^ 



Between 1860 and 1870 the game (walrus, seal, bear, and 

 reindeer) began to diminish in such a degree that the hunters 

 were compelled to seek for themselves new hunting-grounds. 

 They turned to the north and east, the less accessible parts of 

 Spitzbergen, afterwards still farther eastwards towards Novaya 

 Zemlya, and beyond this island to the Kara Sea, and they 

 penetrated farther than all their predecessors. In the history 

 of the North-east Passage therefore some pages must always be 

 devoted to the bold voyages to Novaya Zemlya of these small 

 hunting sloops, provisioned only for the summer. 



The Norwegian hunter who first visited Novaya Zemlya was 

 Elling Carlsen, afterwards known as a member of the 

 Austrian Polar expedition. In 1868 he sailed in a sloop from 

 Hammerfest on a hunting voyage eastward, forced his way into 

 the Kara Sea through the Kara Port, but soon returned through 

 Yugor Schar, and then sailed northwards as far as Cape Nassau. 

 Induced by the abundance of game, he returned next year to the 

 same regions, and then succeeded in penetrating the Kara Sea 

 as far as the neighbourhood of Beli Ostrov, whence he returned 

 to Norway through Matotschkin Schar. Carlsen's lead was 



^ Information regarding the mode of life of the Eussian hunters on the 

 coasts of Spitzbergen is to be found in P. A. le Roy, Relation des avantures 

 arrivees a quatre matelots Busses, cCc. 1766 ; Tschitschagov's Eeise nach dem 

 Eismeer, St. Petersburg, 1793; John Bacstrom, Account of a voyage to 

 Spitzhergen, 1780, London, 1808 (as stated ; I hare not seen this work) ; 

 ■ B. M. Keilhauj Reise i Ost og Vest Finmarken, samt til Beeren-Eiland og 

 Spetsbergen i Aarene 1827 og 182S, Christiania, 1831 ; A. Erman, Archiv 

 far icissenschaftliche Kimde von Eussland, Part 13 (1854), p. 260; K. 

 Chydenius, Si^enska expeditionen till Spetshergen 1861 (p. 435) ; Duner and 

 Nordenskiold, >Srens^Yf Expeditioner till Spetsbergen och Jan Mayenl863 och 

 1864 (p. 101). 



2 Before 1858 there is to be found in Petermann's Mittheilungen only a 

 single notice of the Norwegian Spitzbergen hunting, the existence of 

 which was at the time probably known to no great number of European 

 geographers. 



