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I am aware that it may be objected that the average rate here proposed is a purely arbitrary and conjectural one, because, at the North Cape, it is supposed that there has been a rise of about 5 feet in a century, and at Spitsbergen, according to Mr. Mr.
A like fate befell a second expedition in the following year. Discouraged, but still not despairing, a third fleet set out in 1596 under the command of Jacob van Heemskerk with William Barendtsz as pilot. Forced to winter in Spitsbergen, after terrible sufferings, Heemskerk returned home in the autumn of 1597 with the remnant of his crews. Barendtsz was one of those who perished.
Whatever happened, we should have been at Spitsbergen, and I was in no humor to yield to anything but the most absolute proof. After some delay, the Professor spoke. "Hem!" he said, in a hesitating kind of way, "it really does not look like Iceland." "But supposing it were the island of Jan Mayen?" I ventured to observe. "Not in the least, my boy.
Even the grand continuous mantles of ice that still cover Greenland, Spitsbergen, Nova Zembla, Franz-Joseph-Land, parts of Alaska, and the south polar region are shallowing and shrinking. Every glacier in the world is smaller than it once was. All the world is growing warmer, or the crop of snow-flowers is diminishing.
The formation of the Northern or Greenland Company in 1613, specially created in order to contest the claims of the English Muscovy Company to exclusive rights in the whale fishery off Spitsbergen, led to those violent disputes between the fishermen of the two countries, of which an account has been given. The granting of a charter to the Company of New Netherland was a fresh departure.
English seamen and traders had other grievances to allege against the Hollanders in other parts of the world. The exclusive right to fish for whales in the waters of Spitsbergen and Greenland was claimed by the English on the ground of Hugh Willoughby's alleged discovery of Spitsbergen in 1553.
I remembered a certain Joseph Finsbury who delighted the Tregonwell Arms on the borders of the New Forest with nine' it should have been ten 'versions of a single income of two hundred pounds' placing the imaginary person in but I could not recall the list of towns further than 'London, Paris, Bagdad, and Spitsbergen. This last I must have murmured aloud, for the Agent-General suddenly became human and went on: 'Bussorah, Heligoland, and the Scilly Islands
The Dutch would not admit any such claim, and asserted that Heemskerk was the first to visit the archipelago, and that he planted in 1596 the Dutch flag on the shores of the island, to which he gave the name of Spitsbergen.
The vast tract of ocean between Greenland and Spitsbergen, for instance, might turn out less dangerous, freer as it of necessity would be from the huge icebergs which gather about the Arctic coasts. The earliest expeditions in these latitudes of which we have any record are those of Scoresby, who long cruised about them in search of whales. There was no land within 100 miles.
The long-standing disputes as to fishing rights in the narrow seas and at Spitsbergen, and as to trading spheres in the East Indian Archipelago, remained unsettled; and in the unfortunate and ill-considered war, which broke out at this time between England and France, the sympathies of the States were with the latter.
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