BEAR ISLAND. 169 



the Dutchman Barents, Bear Island, so named from an animal here killed, was 

 again sighted seven years afterwards by the Englishman Bennett, who called it 

 Chérie, after his patron of that name, whence the Cherry Island still occurring on 

 so many maps. At present it is frequently visited by Norwegian fishers for the 

 sake of the sharks, cod, and even herrings swarming round its cavernous cliffs. 

 Temporary curing places have been established on its shores, and a house now 

 stands on the banks of a creek on its north side. But the cetacea, formerly so 

 common, have almost entirely disappeared. In 1608 one vessel alone captured 

 nearly a thousand in seven hours. 



Till recently this island was described by all navigators as of small size, 

 and even in 1864 Nordenskjold and Duner estimated its extent at no more 

 than 26 square miles. But the careful surveys of the Swedish explorers of 

 1868, amongst whom was Nordenskjold himself, showed a superficies of 260 square 

 miles, or exactly tenfold previous estimates. A portion of the surface is covered 

 with lakes and marshes, and in the south-east the land rises to a series of hills, 

 one of which, named Mount Misery by the English, from its dismal appearance, 

 rises, according to Mohn, 1,492 feet above vast snow-fields ; but there are no 

 true glaciers. The rocks, containing lodes of galena, were first explored by the 

 geologist Keilhau. They consist of carboniferous limestones and sandstones, 

 with several rich coal beds, showing the impressions of sigillaria and other 

 fossil plants. These deposits have already been utilised by steamers sailing by 

 the coast. When these strata were formed Bear Island constituted a part of a 

 vast continent, reaching probably to North America, to judge, at least, from the 

 identity of the carboniferous flora in all the islands of the Arctic Ocean. Later 

 on the continent subsided, leaving nothing but these scattered fragments above the 

 surface. 



When the coal was formed the climate of Bear Island, now colder, perhaps, 

 than Spitzbcrgen, resembled that of Central Europe. Of eighteen species of plants 

 collected by Nordenskjold and Malmgrèn in its coal-fields and rocks, fifteen are 

 identical with those of the Swiss carboniferous flora. But now how desolate is 

 this spot, well named originally by Barents Jammerberg, or Mount Desolation ! 

 Its flora comprises only about thirty phanerogamous plants, amongst which is a 

 species of rhododendron, besides eighty species of lichens, whose verdure, seen 

 from a distance, here and there resembles grassy plots. Amongst the twelve 

 species of insects there are no coleoptera, and all, according to Malmgrèn, 

 present peculiar forms, as if they were here indigenous. In summer the island is 

 covered with mews and wild ducks, which here alight before continuing their 

 northern journey. In autumn these migratory birds again stop here on their 

 return southwards. 



Bear Island is the southern headland of a submarine plateau stretching to 

 the north and north-east to the unknown regions of the Frozen Ocean. The 

 channel, 120 miles broad, separating it from the nearest islands, varies in depth 

 from 160 to 1,070 feet, and in 1857 the whole space was covered by a continuous 

 bank of ice. 



156 



