SMEEEENBEEGj OR BLUBBER TOWN. 217 



CHAP. XIV. 



Smeerenberg, or Blubber Town. — Agrtmens of ditto. — 

 Discovery of Spitzbergen. — Barentz. — Whale Fisbery. — 

 — Attempts to colonise the Country, and to make it a 

 penal Settlement. — They fail. — The West Indies versus 

 Spitzbergen. — Eussian Robinson Crusoes. — Wintering 

 Establishment. — How conducted. — Awful Mortality. — 

 Final Tragedy. — Death of eighteen Men from Scurvy 

 and Hunger. — Ingenious Counter-irritant. — Russian 

 Bath. — Cricket. — Boats sewed together. — Post Office. — 

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

 "Ginevra," and change into her. — Nautical Nimrods. — 

 Amusing Walrus-bunt. — Gun bursts. 



I HAVE often been asked " what the inhabitants 

 of Spitzbergen are like ? " 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. 



