seasons, or perhaps once in every three or four summers, when the persecuted animals get a little time to breed and replenish their numbers.

About midway between Hammerfest and Spitzbergen lies Bear Island, originally discovered by Barentz on June 9, 1596. Seven years later, Stephen Ben

net, a shipmaster in the service of the Muscovy Company, while on a voyage of discovery in a north-easterly direction, likewise saw Bear Island on August 16. Ignorant of its previous discovery by Barentz, he called it Cherie Island, after Sir Francis Cherie, a member of the company, and to this day both names are used.

Bennet found some walruses on its desert shores, and returned in the following year with a vessel fitted out by a merchant of the name of Welden, to wage war with these sea-monsters. His first operations were not very successful. Of a herd of at least a thousand walruses, he killed no more than fifteen, and a later attack upon an equally enormous troop raised the entire number of his victims to no more than fifty. Their tusks alone were brought away, and along with some loose ones collected on the beach formed the chief produce of the expedition. At first the unwieldy creatures were fired at, but as the bullets made no great impression on their thick hides, grapeshot was now discharged into their eyes, and the blinded animals were finally killed with axes.

In the following year Welden himself proceeded to Bear Island, and the art of walrus-killing gradually improving by practice, this second expedition proved far more profitable than the first. Care had also been taken to provide. large kettles and the necessary fuel to boil their fat on the spot, so that besides the tusks a quantity of oil was gained. In 1606 Bennet again appeared on the field of action, and the dexterity of the walrus-hunters had now become so great that in less than six hours they killed more than 700, which yielded twenty-two tons of oil. During the following voyage, Welden, who seems to have acted in partnership with Bennet, each taking his turn, killed no less than 1000 walruses in seven hours. Thus Bear Island proved a mine of wealth to these enterprising men, and though the walruses are not now so abundant as in the good old 'times, yet they are still sufficiently numerous to attract the attention of speculators. Every year several expeditions proceed to its shores from the Russian and Norwegian ports, and generally some men pass the winter, in huts erected on its northern and south-eastern coasts.

Considering its high northern latitude of 75°, the climate of Bear Island is uncommonly mild. According to the reports of some Norwegian walrus-hunters, who remained there from 1824 to 1826, the cold was so moderate during the first winter that, until the middle of November, the snow which fell in the night melted during the daytime. It rained at Christmas, and seventy walruses were killed during Christmas week by the light of the moon and that of the Aurora. Even in February the weather was so mild that the men were able to work in the open air under the same latitude as Melville Island, where mercury is a solid body during five months of the year. The cold did not become intense before March, and attained its maximum in April, when the sea froze fast round the island, and the white bears appeared which had been absent during the whole winter. The second winter was more severe than the first, but even then the sea remained open until the middle of November-evidently in consequence of the prevailing south-westerly winds. The greater part of Bear Island is a desolate plateau raised about 100 or 200 feet above the sea. Along its western shores rises a group of three mountains, supposed to be about 200 feet high,

and towards the south it terminates in a solitary hill to which the first discoverers gave the appropriate name of Mount Misery. At the northern foot of this terrace-shaped elevation the plateau is considerably depressed, and forms a kind of oasis, where grass (Poa pratensis), enlivened with violet cardamines and white polygonums and saxifragas, grows to half a yard in height. The general character of the small island is, however, a monotony of stone and morass, with here and there a patch of snow, while the coasts have been worn by the action of the waves into a variety of fantastic shapes, bordered in some parts by a flat narrow strand, the favorite resort of the walrus, and in others affording convenient breeding-places to hosts of sea-birds. In Coal Bay, four parallel seams of coal, about equidistant from each other, are visible on the vertical rockwalls, but they are too thin to be of any practical use.

Bear Island has no harbors,.and is consequently a rather dangerous place to visit. During the first expedition sent out from Hammerfest, it happened that some of the men who had been landed were abandoned by their ship, which was to have cruised along the coast while they were hunting on shore. But the current, the wind, and a dense fog so confused the ignorant captain that, leaving them to their fate, he at once returned to Hammerfest. When the men became aware of their dreadful situation, they determined to leave the island in their boat, and taking with them a quantity of young walrus flesh, they luckily reached Northkyn after a voyage of eight days. It seems almost incredible that these same people immediately after revisited Bear Island in the same ship, and

were again obliged to return to Norway in the same boat. The ship had anchored in the open bay of North Haven, and having taken in its cargo, consisting of 180 walruses, which had all been killed in a few days, was about to leave, when a storm arose, which cast her ashore and broke her to pieces. The Russians had built some huts in the neighborhood, and the provisions might probably have been saved, but rather than winter in the island the crew resolved to venture home again in the boat. This was so small that one-half of them were obliged to lie down on the bottom while the others rowed; the autumn was already far advanced, and they encountered so savage a storm, that an English ship they fell in with at the North Cape vainly endeavored to take them on board. After a ten days' voyage, however, they safely arrived at Magerö, thus proving the truth of the old saying that "Fortune favors the bold." The distance from Bear Island to North Cape is about sixty nautical miles.

In a straight line between Spitzbergen and Iceland lies Jan Meyen, which, exposed to the cold Greenland current, almost perpetually veiled with mists, and surrounded by drift ice, would scarcely ever be disturbed in its dreary solitude but for the numerous walrus and seal herds that frequent its shores. The icebears and the wild sea-birds are its only inhabitants; once some Dutchmen attempted to winter there, but the scurvy swept them all away. Its most remarkable features are the volcano Esk and the huge mountain Beerenberg, towering to the height of 6870 feet, with seven enormous. glaciers sweeping down its sides into the sea.

CHAPTER XI.

NOVA ZEMBLA.

The Sea of Kara.-Loschkin.-Rosmysslow.-Lütke.-Krotow.-Pachtussow.-Sails along the eastern Coast of the Southern Island to Matoschkin Schar.-His second Voyage and Death.—Meteorological Observations of Ziwolka.-The cold Summer of Nova Zembla.-Von Baer's scientific Voyage to Nova Zembla. -His Adventures in Matoschkin Schar.-Storm in Kostin Schar.-Sea Bath and votive Cross.-Botanical Observations.-A natural Garden.-Solitude and Silence.-A Bird Bazar.-Hunting Expeditions of the Russians to Nova Zembla.

THE

HE sea of Kara, bounded on the west by Nova Zembla, and on the east by the vast peninsula of Tajmurland, is one of the most inhospitable parts of the inhospitable Polar Ocean. For all the ice which the east-westerly marine currents drift during the summer along the Siberian coasts accumulates in that immense land-locked bay, and almost constantly blocks the gate of Kara, as the straits have been named that separate Nova Zembla from the island of Waigatz.

The rivers Jenissei and Obi, which remain frozen over until late in June, likewise discharge their vast masses of ice into the gulf of Kara, so that we can not wonder that the eastern coast of Nova Zembla, fronting a sea which opposes almost insuperable obstacles to the Arctic navigator, has remained almost totally unknown until 1833, while the western coast, exposed to the Gulf Stream, and bathed, in summer at least, by a vast open ocean, has long been traced in all its chief outlines on the map.

The walrus-hunter Loschkin is indeed said to have sailed along the whole eastern coast of Nova Zembla in the last century, but we have no authentic records of his voyage, and at a later period Rosmysslow, who, penetrating through Mathew's Straits, or Matoschkin Schar, found Nova Zembla to consist of two large islands, investigated but a small part of those unknown shores. From 1819 to 1824 the Russian Government sent out no less than five expeditions to the sea of Kara; the famous circumnavigator Admiral Lütke endeavored no less than four times to advance along the eastern coast of Nova Zembla, but all these efforts proved fruitless against the superior power of a stormy and ice-blocked sea. Yet in spite of these repeated failures, two enterprising men-Klokow, a chief inspector of forests, and Brandt, a rich merchant of Archangel-fitted out three ships in 1832 for the purpose of solving the mysteries of the sea of Kara.

One of these vessels, commanded by Lieutenant Krotow, was to penetrate. through Mathew's Straits, and, having reached their eastern outlet, to sail thence across the sea to the mouth of the Obi and the Jenissei; but nothing more was heard of the ill-fated ship after her first separation from her companions at Kanin Nos.

The second ship, which was to sail along the western coast of Nova Zembla, and, if possible, to round its northern extremity, was more fortunate, for