VI.] 
THE SPITZBERGEN HUNlTNa. 
291 
Imnters being compelled to seek for new fields of sport on and 
beyond Novaya Zemlya. 
The history of the Spitzbergen hunting has not yet been 
written in a satisfactory way, and is in many respects very 
obscure. It is supposed that after the discovery of Spitzbergen 
in 1596 bv Barents, the hunting in the Polar Seas beo-an durino- 
Bennet's first voyage in 1603, and that the whale-fishing was 
introduced by Jonas Poole in 1610. But already in the follow¬ 
ing year Poole, whose vessel was then wrecked on the west coast 
of Spitzbergen, found in Horn Sound a ship from Hull, to 
which he gave charge of saying his cargo, and two years after 
the English w^ere compelled, in order to keep foreigners from 
the fishing field they wished to monopolise, to send out six 
inen-of-war, which found there eight Spanish, and a number of 
Butch and French vessels {Purclias, iii. pp. 462, 716, &c.). 
Even in our days the accounts of new sources of wealth do not 
spread so speedily as in this case, unless, along with the history 
of the discovery which was written by Hakluyt, Purchas, Be 
Veer, &c., there had been an unknown history of discovery and 
the whale-fishing, of which it may still be possible to collect 
some particulars from the archives of San Sebastian, Bunkirk, 
Hull, and other ports. 
However this may be, it is certain that the English and 
Butch North-east voyages gave origin to a whale-fishery in the 
sea round Spitzbergen, which increased by many millions the 
national wealth of these rich commercial states. The fisliing 
went on at first immediately along the coasts, from which, 
however, the whales w^ere soon driven, so that the whale-fishers 
had to seek new fishing-grounds, first farther out to sea between 
Spitzbergen and Greenland, then in Bavis Strait, and finally in 
the South Polar Sea, or in the sea on both sides of Behring’s 
Straits. 
Spitzbergen, when the whale-fishing ceased in its neighbour¬ 
hood, was mostly abandoned, until the Russians began to settle 
