128 Arctic and Antarctic Exploration [part i 
had all the appearance of a large town, with warehouses, 
blubber-boiling sheds, dwelling huts, and even a church. 
Smeerenburg began to decline from 1644, when the whales 
retrfeated from the coast and were only taken at sea. 
But, until 1770, the Dutch fishery throve. 
Captain Edge was mindful of discovery as well as 
of the main business of whaling. He explored to the 
south and east, and sighted Wyche Land 1 far to the 
east. Indeed he and his predecessors completed the 
whole outline of the Spitsbergen archipelago, except 
North-East Land, some gaps being filled in by the Dutch. 
As the voyages of English and Dutch were contem- 
poraneous, it is not always clear to which nation the 
discovery of each portion of coast should be attributed, 
though it is certain that places discovered and named 
by the English now have Dutch names on the charts 2 . 
In 1630 an English crew wintered in Spitsbergen for 
the first time, in a hut in Bell Sound, and all survived 
and were taken home in the following summer. In 
1634 some Hollanders were left to winter at Smeerenburg 
but they all died. 
The archipelago of Spitsbergen, thus discovered by 
English and Dutch in the early part of the 17th century, 
is 250 miles in length, from 76 0 35' N., to 8o° 35' N., 
with a width of 200 miles. It is a wild region of barren 
mountains and glaciers, with some splendid scenery. It 
is fairly well stocked with animal life both on land and 
in its seas ; bears, foxes, hares and birds on land ; whales, 
walrus, seals, and fish in its seas. Other discoveries con- 
nected with the Spitsbergen group, especially as regards 
its internal physiography and geology, were reserved for 
later times. 
1 Since found to be three islands ; the proper name of the group 
being Wyche Islands. 
2 For instance Wyche's Sound, discovered by Baffin and Fotherby 
in 1614, if not by Marmaduke in 1612, is now called Wijde Bay, a name, 
as Sir Martin Conway has pointed out, that was never heard of before 
1670. 
