CHAPTER XXXI 
SPITSBERGEN 
EXPEDITIONS BEFORE 1872 
We have seen how flourishing the Spitsbergen whale 
fishery became and how admirably its history was written, 
the Dutch by Zorgdrager, and the English by Scoresby. 
But when the annual slaughter began to make these 
animals scarce there was eagerness to discover new fishing 
ground. 
Theunis Ys was one of the most experienced navigators 
in the ice to the eastward, and one of the first who sought 
for whales in that direction. Captain Willem de Vlamingh 
followed him in 1664 and even rounded the northern point 
of Novaya Zemlya, reaching a latitude of 82 0 10' N. 
Along the north coast of Spitsbergen the Dutch whalers 
never went east of the Seven Islands, which they dis- 
covered, or of Hinlopen Strait. This is conclusive from 
the evidence of Martens in 1671, a most reliable authority 
as regards the seventeenth century. But early in the 
eighteenth century, two Dutch captains, Cornelis Giles 
and Outger Rep, went far to the eastward and Giles or 
Gillis sighted what has since been called Gillis Land. He 
also found that what is now known as Hinlopen Strait 
was not an inlet as had been supposed but a navigable 
strait 1 . 
The Russians took the lead in Spitsbergen in the 
eighteenth century, their plan being to form a depot in 
Bell Sound. In 1764 Lieut. Nemtinoff was sent to build 
houses and to land stores there, to form a base whence 
to push through the ice to the Pacific. In the following 
year the expedition under Captain Vassili Tschitschagoff, 
1 At my request the late Commodore Jansen searched the Dutch 
archives, and wrote an admirable memoir on the ice years in the Novaya 
Zemlya and Spitsbergen Seas, with notices of the chief Dutch voyages 
and discoveries. The same accomplished officer was the author of the 
chapter on Land and Sea Breezes in Maury's Physical Geography of the 
Sea. 
