Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 October 1896 — THE ISLAND OF SPITZBERGEN. [ARTICLE]

THE ISLAND OF SPITZBERGEN.

H Was Once Famous for Its Whale and Shark Fisheries. Spitsbergen has been crossed at last! From Tromso, Sweden, came the intelligence recently that the expedition organized by Sir W. Martin Conway has accomplished the feat so frequently attempted by others in vain. For the first time the interior of this strange land mass has been explored, and the data secured will doubtless make a most iuteres'lug contribution to human knowledge. Spitzbergen has been best known hitherto in connection with Arctic explorations and its once prosperous fisheries. The fisheries are still valuable, though not nearly so important as in former days. One marine animal sought by the pelagic hunters is the great northern shark. It is one of the largest of all sharks and is not dangerous to man. The liver of a single fullgrown specimen yields four or five barrels of oil. This oil is useful for several purposes, but it figures in commerce most conspicuously as a substitute for cod liver oil. Much of the cod liver oil now on the market is in reality obtained from shark's livers. Shark skin is employed to a considerable extent for leather, and a superior kind of sand paper is made from it. In the seventeenth century a considerable town was created on the neighboring island of Amsterdam, where,on a broad plain, grew up the astonishing village of Smcerenberg. Here, within ten degrees of the North Pole, for a score of years prevailed an amount of comfort and prosperity that can scarcely be <*redlted by the visitor of to-day in that desolate Arctic region. In the train of the whalers followed merchant vessels, loaded with wine, brandy, tobacco and edibles unknown in the fare of the hardy fishers. Shops were opened, drinking booths erected, wooden and even brick houses constructed for the laborers and whalemen. Bakeries were put up, and, as in Holland, the sound of the baker’s horn, announcing hot, fresh bread for sale, drew crowds of eager purchasers. The Dutch frau was not deterred by the frigidity of the latitude from becoming a temporary resident of Smcerenberg. But the shore fisheries soon falled.and, the whalers being driven to the remote and open seas, this strange summer city fell into decadence and eventual ruin. Near the vanished town lie today the mortal remains of more than 1,000 stalwart fishermen. From the Spitzbergen whale fishery Holland drew in a little over a century about $1)0,000,000. The most recent attempt to colonize the island was in 1872, when Sweden and Norway proposed to take possession of the whole country; but Russia objected. In 1803 tlie Norwegian, Carlsen, accomplished for tlie first time the feat of circumnavigating Spitzbergen. One of the most Interesting features of the main island Is an Ice sheet 3,000 feet thick, which flows toward the east and presents on the coast a precipitous wall insurmountable from the sea. Its sen front presents the broadest known glacier.