V.] DISCOVERY OF BEAR ISLAND AND SPITZBERGEN. 247 
the edge of the pack.^ On the Eth they discovered, north of 
North Cape, a new island, situated in latitude 74° 30' North. 
A large bear was killed here, and on this account the island 
was called Bear Island. On the gth they came in the 80th 
degree of latitude to another formerly unknown land, which 
they believed to be connected with Greenland. It was in fact 
the large group of islands, which afterwards obtained the name 
Spitzbergen. There were found here on a small island the 
eggs of a species of goose— rotgansen^ which comes yearly 
to Holland in great flocks, but whose breeding place was 
before unknown. With reference to this. He Veer says that 
it is finally proved that this goose is not, as has been hitherto 
supposed, propagated in Scotland by the goose laying her eggs 
from the branches of trees overhanging the water, the eggs 
being broken in pieces against the surface of the water, and 
the newly hatched young immediately swimming about. 
After an unsuccessful attempt had been made to sail to the 
north of Spitzbergen the vessels proceeded southwards along the 
west coast,^ and on the July came again to Bear Island. 
Here the vessels parted company, Barents sailing eastwards 
towards Novaya Zemlya, Rijp northwards towards the east 
coast of Spitzbergen. On the ph July, Barents reached the 
west coast of Novaya Zemlya in latitude 73° 20' North. On 
1 Every Polar traveller has at one time or other made the same or a 
similar mistake. In 1861, for instance, a boat party, of whom I was one, 
thought that they saw clearly sailors in sou’-westers and with white shirt¬ 
sleeves building' a cairn on a point which appeared to be at no great 
distance. But the cairn was found to be a very distant mountain, the 
shirt-sleeves were formed of snow-fields, the sou’-westers of pointed cliffs, 
and the motion arose from oscillatory changes in the atmospheric strata. 
2 Undoubtedly Anser hernicla, which is common on the west coast of 
Spitzbergen. The Dutch name ought neither to be translated red goose^ as 
some Englishmen have done, nor confounded with rotges. 
^ See the copy of Barents’ own map with his course laid down upon it, 
which is to be found in Pontanus, Rerum et urbis Amstelodamensium 
Ilistoria (Amst. 1611), and is annexed to this work in photolithographic 
facsimile. 
