August i6, 1906] 



NA TURE 



33i 



I UK EARLY IIISTORV OF SPITSBERGEN.' 

 " T XASMUCH as Industrie and diligence arc two 

 • ^ principall stcjjs to atchieve great enterprises, 

 and negligence and idlenesse are enemies to the same ; 

 we would have you in this charge conimilled unto you, 

 to embrace the one, and to avoide the other." Such 

 were the instructions of the Muscovy Company to 

 Thomas Edge, the commander of its third expedition 

 to .Spitsbergen, in 1610. By these same steps to 

 success Sir Martin Conway has collected the widely- 

 scattered materials of Spitsbergen history, and by wise 

 selection and with high literary skill has wrought 

 them into an addition to Arctic literature of unusual 

 interest. The volume tells us in greater detail than 

 has ever before been possible the history of Spits- 

 bergen from its discovery by Barents in 1596, to the 

 beginning of its scientific exploration by the expedi- 

 tion of Sven Loven in 1S37. It is, on its own lines, an 

 ideal geographical monograph, from its bibliographic 

 thoroughness, its sound literary judg- 

 ment, and its evidence of exhaustive 

 research in British and Continental 

 libraries. It contains much of interest 

 to naturalists, with its fresh informa- 

 tion regarding the early whale fishery 

 in the Greenland seas. 



Geographical exploration in the 

 Spitsbergen area was begun as a busi- 

 ness enterprise, and the keen com- 

 mercial competition led to serious poli- 

 tical complications. Though discovered 

 by a Dutchman, .Spitsbergen was 

 formally annexed by England in 1614; 

 but we were forced to agree to a par- 

 tition of the territory with the Dutch, 

 and after 1670 both nations abandoned 

 it. Though now the onlv ownerless 

 piece of Europe, it is claimed as being 

 within the Russian sphere of influ- 

 ence, owing to its occupation by 

 Russian trappers in the nineteenth 

 century. The main part of the his- 

 tory is political; but the adventures of 

 the whalers and walrus-hunters, and 

 the tragic fate of various parties left 

 to winter there contribute tlie most 

 stirring incidents in the narrative. 



The chapters of most scientific in- 

 terest are those dealing with the fishery 

 for Balaena mysticetiis, the Green- 

 land right whale, which was be- 

 gun by some Biscay whalers in 

 the employment of the Muscovy 

 Company of London in 161 1. The European whaling 

 industry was founded by the Basques, and, as the 

 author tells us, the British and Dutch whalers retained 

 many Basque methods, regulations and terms, as, 

 e.g., harpoon. The Dutch, having established their 

 claim to join in the whale fishery, founded .Smeeren- 

 burg, or Blubbertown, in 1614, on Amsterdam Island, 

 off the north-eastern corner of Spitsbergen. This, 

 the most northern town on record, flourished from 

 1633 to 1643. The whale oil was prepared on shore, 

 and, according to Sir Martin Conway's estimate, the 

 town was occupied in the season bv from 1000 to 

 2000 people — a number far below the exaggerated 

 reports of 20,000 which are so often quoted. The 

 book includes some interesting contemporary accounts 

 of the whaling industry, of which perhaps the most 

 valuable is Fotherby's description, written in 1615, of 

 the method of whale capture adopted at that period. 



The Spitsbergen settlements declined after 1644, as 

 the whales abandoned the fiords and had to be fol- 

 lowed into the Greenland Sea, and there killed and 

 treated. The Dutch kept up the fishing .somewhat 

 later than the English whalers, who abandoned the 

 industry in 1670, and only resumed it, and then not 

 from Spitsbergen, after 1770. 



The land animals on Spitsbergen must have been very 

 abundant on its first discovery, for in 1613 Fotherby's 

 party, in addition to as many whales as he could use, 

 secured a bag of " 400 deare," and " also good store 

 of wild fowle " and " manie young foxes, which wee 

 made as tame and familiar as spaniell-whelpcs. " 



The walrus has shared in the same reduction in 

 range and numbers as the rest of the fauna. It has 

 now abandoned the western coast of Spitsbergen, but, 

 as the author reminds us, a walrus was killed in the 

 " Netherlandish Sea," as recorded by the drawing of 

 it, now in the British Museum, by Diirer in 1521. 



1 "No Man's Land: a 

 T506 to the beginnillK of I 

 Sir.M.irtinConway. Pp. : 



History of Spitsberge 

 le Scientific Exploratic 

 ii + j7S. (Cambridge: 



NO. 1920, VOL. 74] 



from its Discovery in 

 I nf the Country." By 

 fnivfrsity Press, 1906.) 



— Spitsbergen from Barents' Chart (1598). From " No Man's Land," 



The early narratives say little about the interior 

 of Spitsbergen, but the records are of value in refer- 

 ence to the reported emergence of land during the 

 past three centuries. Sir M. Conway remarks that 

 Poole's record of 1611 shows that there has been no 

 change since then in the level of the shallow bar off 

 " Bear Island." 



The value of the book as a permanent work of refer- 

 ence is enhanced by its full bibliography of the his- 

 tory and geography of Spitsbergen (pp. 305-327), a 

 chronological list of the maps (pp. 342-346), and a 

 history of the geographical nomenclature. There is 

 also a valuable series of reprints of the earlv maps, 

 from Barents in 1598 to that after Edge in 1662, 

 and that after Doncker in 1663, which was the first 

 of the series which " really begins to resemble the 

 form of the country it professes to depict." The 

 volume is accompanied by a map, of which the outline 

 is taken from the Admiralty chart, and the names are 

 given according to the results of Sir Martin Conway's 

 study of the nomenclature. J. W. G. 



