SMEERENBERG, OB BLUBBER TOWN. 217 



CHAP. XIV. 



Smeerenberg, or Blubber Town. Agremens of ditto. 

 Discovery of Spitzbergen. Barentz. Whale Fishery. 

 Attempts to colonise the Country, and to make it a 

 penal Settlement. They fail. The West Indies versus 

 Spitzbergen. Eussian Eobinson Crusoes. Wintering 

 Establishment. How conducted. Awful Mortality. 

 Final Tragedy. Death of eighteen Men from Scurvy 

 and Hunger. Ingenious Counter-irritant. Eussian 

 Bath. Cricket. Boats sewed together. Post Office. 

 Signs of Deer. Kill three Geese with Ball. Find the 

 &quot;Ginevra,&quot; and change into her. Nautical Nimrods. 

 Amusing Walrus-hunt. Gun bursts. 



I HAVE often been asked &quot;what the inhabitants 

 of Spitzbergen are like? &quot; but I need scarcely 

 mention to the intelligent reader that Spitz 

 bergen never has been inhabited; unless we 

 include under that term the flourishing summer 

 settlement of Smeerenberg, or New Amsterdam, 

 near Hakluyt s Headland, which was the ren 

 dezvous and boiling establishment of the Dutch 

 whaling-fleet during the palmy days of the 

 Spitzbergen whale-fishery in the seventeenth 

 century. 



