38 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. 



rus. I recognized the portly form of Captain Er- 

 icson — very like a "stour cobbe," or large seal 

 himself — on the deck, and requested him to come 

 on board to dinner, an invitation with which he 

 promptly complied. The " Nordbye 11 had left 

 Tonsberg in the Christiania Fiord in February 

 for the seal fishery in the great ice-field in the 

 neighborhood of Jan Mayen's Island, and, having 

 been unlucky there, had only lately come to Spitz- 

 bergen as a dernier ressort, in hopes of making up 

 a cargo ; she is an unwieldy tub of 200 tons, with 

 five boats and twenty-four men, and is far too 

 small for the northwestern fishery, as she is un- 

 able to hoist or turn over a dead whale ; while, on 

 the other hand, she is too big for the Spitzbergen 

 seal and walrus fishery, as no one locality is gen- 

 erally able to employ five boats at a time, and his 

 crew are consequently only half employed. Ericson 

 told us that the spring fishery at Jan Mayen's had 

 been very unsuccessful and very disastrous ; many 

 vessels had gone home "clean; 11 several Scotch 

 and Norwegian vessels had been much damaged, 

 and two or three totally lost ; among others, the 

 " Empress of India, 11 a bran new iron screw whaler, 

 from Peterhead, which had cost £20, 000, had gone 

 down bodily, the cflfew escaping with difficulty into 

 a Norwegian brig belonging to the same port and 

 same owners as the "Nordbye. 11 Ericson express- 

 ed his decided conviction that iron vessels will 

 "never do 11 for the northern whale fishery, as the 



