[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ARCTIC PUFFIN. Swedish, Lunnefogel. (Mormon Arcticus, L.) THE BLACK GUILLEMOT. Swedish, Tejst. (Uria Grylle, L.) ]
The sea fowl mentioned above are never met with inland.
They never settle on a gra.s.sy sward or on a level sandy beach. The steep fowl-fell sides, the sea, ground-ice, pieces of drift-ice and small stones rising above the water, form their habitat. They swim with great skill both on, and under the water. The black guillemots and rotges fly swiftly and well; Brunnich"s guillemots, on the contrary, heavily and ill. The latter therefore do not perhaps remove in winter farther from their hatching places than to the nearest open water, and it is probable that colonies of Brunnich"s guillemots are not located at places where the sea freezes completely even far out from the coast. On this perhaps depends the scarcity of Brunnich"s guillemot in the Kara Sea.
While sailing in the Arctic Ocean, vessels are nearly always attended by two kinds of gulls, the greedy _stormaosen_ or _borgmaesteren_, glaucous gull (_Larus glaucus_, Brunn.), and the gracefully formed, swiftly flying _kryckian_ or _tretaoiga maosen_, kittiwake (_Larus tridactylus_, L.), and if the hunter lies to at an ice-floe to flense upon it a seal which has been shot, it is not long till a large number of snow-white birds with dark blue bills and black legs settle down in the neighbourhood in order that they may get a portion of the spoil. They belong to the third kind of gull common in the north, _ismaosen_, the ivory gull (_Larus eburneus_, Gmel.).
[Ill.u.s.tration: BREEDING-PLACE FOR GLAUCOUS GULLS. Borgmaestareport on Bear Island, after a midnight photograph taken by the Author on the 18th-19th June, 1864. ]
In disposition and mode of life these gulls differ much from each other. The glaucous gull is sufficiently strong to be able to defend its eggs and young against the attack of the mountain fox. It therefore breeds commonly on the summits of easily accessible small cliffs, hillocks or heaps of stones, preferably in the neighbourhood of "loomeries" or on fowl-islands, where the young of the neighbouring birds offer an opportunity for prey and hunting during the season when its own young are being fed. Sometimes, as for instance at Brandywine Bay on Spitzbergen, the glaucous gull breeds in great flocks on the ledges of steep fell-sides, right in the midst of Brunnich"s guillemots. On Bear Island I have seen it hatch on the very beach, at a place, for instance, under the arch of a waterfall leaping down from a precipitous cliff. The nests, which, to judge from the quant.i.ty of birds" dung in their neighbourhood, are used for a long succession of years, are placed in a depression in the rock or the ground, and lined with a little straw or a feather or two. The number of the eggs is three or four. After boiling they show a jellylike, half transparent white, and a reddish yellow, and are exceedingly delicious. The young birds have white flesh, resembling chicken. The burgomaster is common everywhere along the coasts of Novaya Zemlya and Spitzbergen. Yet I have not seen the nest of this gull on the north coast of North East Land or on the Seven Islands.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A. THE KITTIWAKE B. THE IVORY GULL. Swedish, Kryckia.
(Larus tridactylus, L.) Swedish, Ismaos (Larus eburneus, L.) ]
Still more common than the glaucous gull in the lands of the High North is _kryckian_, the kittiwake. It is met with far out at sea, where it accompanies the vessel whole days, circling round the tops of the masts, and sometimes--according to the statements of the walrus-hunters, when a storm is approaching--pecking at the points of the pendant. When the vessel is in harbour, the kittiwakes commonly gather round it to pick out anything eatable in the refuse that may be thrown away. They breed in great flocks on the steep escarpments in some separate part of the fowl-fells, in connection with which, it is evident that the kittiwakes always endeavour to choose the best places of the fell--those that are most inaccessible to the fox and are best protected against bad weather. Among the birds of the north the kittiwake is the best builder; for its nest is walled with straw and mud, and is very firm. It juts out like a great swallow"s nest from the little ledge to which it is fixed.
Projecting ends of straw are mostly bent in, so that the nest, with its regularly rounded form, has a very tidy appearance. The interior is further lined with a soft, carefully arranged layer of moss, gra.s.s and seaweed, on which the bird lays three to four well-flavoured eggs. The soft warm underlayer is, however, not without its inconvenience; for Dr. Stuxberg during the voyage of 1875 found in such a nest no fewer than twelve kinds of insects, among them _Pulex vagabundus_, Bohem. in nine specimens, a beetle, a fly, &c.
The ivory gull, called by Fr. Martens "Rathsherr," the Councillor, is found, as its Swedish name indicates, princ.i.p.ally out at sea in the _pack_, or in fjords filled with drift-ice. It is a true ice-bird, and, it may almost be said, scarcely a water-bird at all, for it is seldom seen swimming on the surface, and it can dive as little as its relatives, the glaucous gull and the kittiwake. In greed it competes with the fulmar. When any large animal has been killed among the drift-ice, the ivory gull seldom fails to put in an appearance in order to quench its hunger with flesh and blubber. It consumes at the same time the excrements of the seal and the walrus, on which account from three to five ivory gulls may often be seen sitting for a long time round a seal-hole, quiet and motionless, waiting patiently the arrival of the seal (Malmgren).
[Ill.u.s.tration: RARE NORTHERN GULLS. A. Sabine"s Gull (Larus Sabinii, Sabine) B. Ross"s Gull. (Larus Rossii, Richaids.) ]
The proper breeding places of this bird scarcely appear to be yet known. So common as it is both on the coasts of Spitzbergen from the Seven Islands to South Cape and on the north coast of Novaya Zemlya and America, its nest has only been found twice, once in 1853 by McClintock at Cape Krabbe in North America in 77 25" N.L., the second time by Dr. Malmgren at Murchison Bay, in 82 2"
N.L. The two nests that Malmgren found consisted of depressions, twenty-three to twenty-six centimetres in diameter, in a heap of loose gravel, on a ledge of a steeply-sloping limestone-rock wall.
In each nest was found only one egg, which, on the 30th July, already contained a down-covered young bird. For all the ivory gulls which have their home on Spitzbergen there were doubtless required several hundred such breeding-places as that at Murchison Bay. When to this is added the fact that we never in autumn saw on Spitzbergen any full-grown young of this kind of gull, I a.s.sume that its proper breeding-place must be found farther north, on the sh.o.r.es of some still unknown Polar land, perhaps continually surrounded by ice. It deserves to be mentioned with reference to this, that Murchison Bay was covered with ice when Malmgren found the nests referred to above.
Besides these varieties of the gull, two other species have been found, though very rarely, in the Polar regions, viz., _Larus Sabinii_, Sabine, and _Larus Rossii_, Richards. Although I have myself only seen the latter, and that but once (on the Chukchi Peninsula), I here give drawings of them both for the use of future Polar explorers. They are perhaps, if they be properly observed, not so rare as is commonly supposed.
Often during summer in the Arctic regions one hears a penetrating shriek in the air. When one inquires into the reason of this, it is found to proceed from a kittiwake, more rarely from a glaucous gull, eagerly pursued by a bird as large as a crow, dark-brown, with white breast and long tail-feathers. It is _labben_, the common skua (_Lestris parasitica_, L.), known by the Norwegian walrus-hunters under the name of _tjufjo_, derived from the bird"s cry, "_I-o i-o_," and its shameless thief-nature. When the "tjufjo" sees a kittiwake or a glaucous gull fly off with a shrimp, a fish, or a piece of blubber, it instantly attacks it. It flies with great swiftness backwards and forwards around its victim, striking it with its bill, until the attacked bird either drops what it has caught, which is then immediately snapped up by the skua, or else settles down upon the surface of the water, where it is protected against attack. The skua besides eats eggs of other birds, especially of eiders and geese. If the eggs are left but for a few moments unprotected in the nest, it is immediately to the front and shows itself so voracious that it is not afraid to attack nests from which the hatching birds have been frightened away by men engaged in gathering eggs only a few yards off. With incredible dexterity it pecks a hole in the eggs and sucks their contents. If speed is necessary, this takes place so quickly and out of so many eggs in succession that it sometimes has to stand without moving, unable to fly further until it has thrown up what it had swallowed. The skua in this way commonly takes part in the plundering of every eider island. The walrus-hunters are very much embittered against the bird on account of this intrusion on their industry, and kill it whenever they can. The whalers called it "struntjaeger"--refuse-hunter--because they believed that it hunted gulls in order to make them void their excrements which "struntjaegeren" was said to devour as a luxury.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A. THE COMMON SKUA. Swedish, Labben, (Lestris parasitica, L.) B. BUFFON"S SKUA. Swedish, Fjellabben. (Lestris Buffonii, Boie.) C. THE POMARINE SKUA. Swedish, Bredstjertade Labben (Lestris pomarina. Tem.) ]
The skua breeds upon low, unsheltered, often water-drenched headlands and islands, where it lays one or two eggs on the bare ground, often without trace of a nest. The eggs are so like the ground that it is only with difficulty that they can be found. The male remains in the neighbourhood of the nest during the hatching season. If a man, or an animal which the bird considers dangerous, approaches the eggs, the pair endeavour to draw attention from them by removing from the nest, creeping on the ground and flapping their wings in the most pitiful way. The bird thus acts with great skill a veritable comedy, but takes good care that it is not caught.
As is well known, we know only two varieties of colour in this bird, a self-coloured brown, and a brown on the upper part of the body with white below. Of these I have only once in the Arctic regions seen the self-coloured variety, viz. at Bell Sound in 1858. All the hundreds of skuas which I have seen, besides, have had the throat and lower part of the body coloured white.
This bird is very common on Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya. Yet perhaps it scarcely breeds on the north part of North-East Land.
Along with the bird now described there occur, though sparingly, two others:--_bredstjertade labben_, the Pomarine skua (_Lestris pomarina_, Tem.) and _fjellalbben_, Buffon"s skua (_Lestris Buffonii_, Boie). The latter is distinguished by its more slender build and two very long tail-feathers, and it is much more common farther to the east than on Spitzbergen. I have not had an opportunity of making any observations on the mode of life of these birds.
As the skua pursues the kittiwake and the glaucous gull, it is in its turn pursued with extraordinary fierceness by the little swiftly-flying and daring bird _taernan_, the Arctic tern (_Sterna macroura_, Naum.). This beautiful bird is common everywhere on the coasts of Spitzbergen, but rather rare on Novaya Zemlya. It breeds in considerable flocks on low gra.s.s-free headlands or islands, covered with sand or pebbles. The eggs, which are laid on the bare ground without any trace of a nest, are so like lichen-covered pebbles in colour, that it is only with difficulty one can get eyes upon them; and this is the case in a yet higher degree with the newly-hatched young, which notwithstanding their thin dress of down have to lie without anything below them among the bare stones. From the shortness of their legs and the length of their wings it is only with difficulty that the tern can go on the ground. It is therefore impossible for it to protect its nest in the same way as the "tjufjo." Instead, this least of all the swimming birds of the Polar lands does not hesitate to attack any one, whoever he may be, that dares to approach its nest. The bird circles round the disturber of the peace with evident exasperation, and now and then goes whizzing past his head at such a furious rate that he must every moment fear that he will be wounded with its sharp beak.
Along with the swimmers enumerated above, we find everywhere along these sh.o.r.es two species of eider, the _vanliga eidern_, common eider (_Somateria mollissima_, L.) and _praktejdern_, king-duck (_Somateria spectabilis_, L.). The former prefers to breed on low islands, which, at the season for laying eggs, are already surrounded by open water and are thus rendered inaccessible to the mountain foxes that wander about on the mainland. The richest eider islands I have seen in Spitzbergen are the Down Islands at Horn Sound. When I visited the place in 1858 the whole islands were so thickly covered with nests that it was necessary to proceed with great caution in order not to trample on eggs. Their number in every nest was five to six, sometimes larger, the latter case, according to the walrus-hunters, being accounted for by the female when she sits stealing eggs from her neighbours. I have myself seen an egg of _Anser bernicla_ in an eider"s nest. The eggs are hatched by the female, but the beautifully coloured male watches in her neighbourhood and gives the signal of flight when danger approaches.
The nest consists of a rich, soft, down bed. The best down is got by robbing the down-covered nest, an inferior kind by plucking the dead birds. When the female is driven from the nest she seeks in haste to sc.r.a.pe down over the eggs in order that they may not be visible. She besides squirts over them a very stinking fluid, whose disgusting smell adheres to the collected eggs and down. The stinking substance is however so volatile or so easily decomposed in the air that the smell completely disappears in a few hours. The eider, which some years ago was very numerous on Spitzbergen,[63] has of late years considerably diminished in numbers, and perhaps will soon be completely driven thence, if some restraint be not laid on the heedless way in which not only the Eider Islands are now plundered, but the birds too killed, often for the mere pleasure of slaughter.
On Novaya Zemlya, too, the eider is common. It breeds, for instance, in not inconsiderable numbers on the high islands in Karmakul Bay.
The eider"s flesh has, it is true, but a slight flavour of train oil, but it is coa.r.s.e and far inferior to that of Brunnich"s guillemot. In particular, the flesh of the female while hatching is almost uneatable.
[Ill.u.s.tration: HEADS OF THE A. EIDER; B. KING DUCK; C. BARNACLE GOOSE; D. WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE. ]
The king-duck occurs more sparingly than the common eider. On Spitzbergen it is called the "Greenland eider," on Greenland the "Spitzbergen eider," which appears to indicate that in neither place is it quite at home. On Novaya Zemlya, on the other hand, it occurs in larger numbers. Only once have I seen the nest of this bird, namely, in 1873 on Axel"s Islands in Bell Sound, where it bred in limited numbers together with the common eider. In the years 1858 and 1864, when I visited the same place, it did not breed there.
Possibly its proper breeding place is on Novaya Zemlya at the inland lakes a little way from the coast. The walrus-hunters say that its eggs taste better than those of the common eider. They are somewhat smaller and have a darker green colour.
On the Down Islands hatches, along with the eiders, the long-necked _prutgaessen_, barnacle goose (_Anser bernicla_, L.) marked on the upper part of the body in black and brownish grey. It lays four to five white eggs in an artless nest without down, scattered here and there among the eiders" nests rich in down. This variety of goose is found in greatest numbers during the moulting season at small inland lakes along the coast, for instance on the line of coast between Bell Sound and Ice Fjord and on Gooseland. The walrus-hunters sometimes call them "rapphoens"--partridges--a misleading name, which in 1873 induced me to land on the open coast south of Ice Fjord, where "rapphoens" were to be found in great numbers. On landing I found only moulting barnacle geese. The barnacle goose finds its food more on land and inland lakes than in the sea. Its flesh accordingly is free from the flavour of train oil and tastes well, except that of the female during the hatching season, when it is poor and tough. The eggs are better than the eider"s.
On Spitzbergen besides the barnacle goose we meet with the closely allied species _Anser leucopsis_, Bechst. It is rather rare, but more common on Novaya Zemlya. Further there occurs at the last-named place a third species of goose, _vildgaosen_, the "grey goose" or "great goose" of the walrus-hunters; the bean goose (_Anser segetum_, Gmel.), which is replaced on Spitzbergen by a nearly allied type, the pink-footed goose (_Anser brachyrhynchus_, Baillon). These geese are much larger than both the eider and the barnacle goose, and appear to be sufficiently strong to defend themselves against the fox. They commonly breed high up on some mossy or gra.s.sy oasis, among the stone mounds of the coast mountains, or on the summit of a steep strand escarpment in the interior of the fjords. During the moulting season the grey geese collect in flocks at the small fresh-water lakes along the coast. The flesh of this species of goose is finer than that of the common tame goose and has no trace of any train flavour.
Among the swimming birds that give the summer life on Novaya Zemlya its peculiar character, we may further reckon the scaup-duck and the swan. _Alfogel_ or _allan_, the long-tailed duck (_Fuligula glacialis_, L.) is rare on Spitzbergen, but occurs very generally on Novaya Zemlya, and especially in the Kara Sea, on whose coasts it is seen in summer collected in large flocks. _Mindre saongsvanen_, Bewick"s swan (_Cygnus Bewickii_, Yarr.), is the most n.o.bly formed and coloured bird of the north. I have already described its nest, which is found in considerable numbers in Gooseland. The bird is blinding white, resembling the common swan, but somewhat smaller and with a considerable difference in the formation of the windpipe and the "keel" of the breastbone. The flesh is said to be coa.r.s.e and of inferior flavour.
[Ill.u.s.tration: BEWICK"S SWAN. Swedish, Mindre Saongsvanen.
(Cygnus Bewickii, Yarr) BREASTBONE of Cygnus Bewickii, showing the peculiar position of the windpipe. After Yarrell. ]
The land-birds in the Arctic regions are less numerous both in species and individuals than the sea-birds. Some of them, however, also occur in large numbers. Almost wherever one lands, some small greyish brown waders are seen running quickly to and fro, sometimes in pairs, sometimes in flocks of ten to twenty. It is the most common wader of the north, the _fjaerplyt_ of the walrus-hunters, the purple sandpiper (_Tringa maritima_, Brunn.). It lives on flies, gnats, and other land insects. Its well-filled crop shows how well the bird knows how to collect its food even in regions where the entomologist can only with difficulty get hold of a few of the animal forms belonging to his field of research. The purple sandpiper lays its four or five eggs in a pretty little nest of dry straw on open gra.s.sy or mossy plains a little distance from the sea.
It also endeavours to protect its nest by acting a comedy like that of the _tjufjo_. Its flesh is delicious.
In the company of the purple sandpiper there is often seen a somewhat larger wader, or, more correctly, a bird intermediate between the waders and the swimming birds. This is the beautiful _brednaebbade simsnaeppan_, the grey (or red) phalarope (_Phalaropus fulicarius_, Bonap.). It is not rare on Spitzbergen, and it is exceedingly common, perhaps even the commonest bird on the north coast of Asia. I imagine therefore that it is not absent from Novaya Zemlya, though there has. .h.i.therto been observed there only the nearly allied _smalnaebbade simsnaeppan_, the red-necked phalarope (_Phalaropus hyperboreus_, Lath.). This bird might be taken as the symbol of married love, so faithful are the male and female, being continually to be seen in each other"s company. While they search for their food in pools of water along the coast, they nearly always bear each other company, swimming in zigzag, so that every now and then they brush past each other. If one of them is shot, the other flies away only for a short time until it observes that its mate is left behind. It then flies back, swims with evident distress round its dead friend, and pushes it with its bill to get it to rise. It does not, however, spend any special care on its nest or the rearing of its young, at least to judge by the nest which Duner found at Bell Sound in 1864. The position of the nest was indicated by three eggs laid without anything below them on the bare ground, consisting of stone splinters. The flesh of the phalarope is a great delicacy, like that of other waders which occur in the regions in question, but which I cannot now stay to describe.
During excursions in the interior of the land along the coast, one often hears, near heaps of stones or shattered cliffs, a merry twitter. It comes from an old acquaintance from the home land, the _snoesparfven_ or _snoelaerkan_, the snow-bunting (_Emberiza nivalis_, L.). The name is well chosen, for in winter this pretty bird lives as far south as the snow goes on the Scandinavian peninsula, and in summer betakes itself to the snow limit in Lapland, the _tundra_ of North Siberia, or the coasts of Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya. It there builds its carefully-constructed nest of gra.s.s, feathers and down, deep in a stone heap, preferably surrounded by a gra.s.sy plain. The air resounds with the twitter of the little gay warbler, which makes the deeper impression because it is the only true bird"s song one hears in the highest north.[64]
On Spitzbergen there is sometimes to be met with in the interior of the country, on the mountain slopes, a game bird, _spetsbergsripan_, the rock ptarmigan (_Lagopus hyperboreus_, Sund.). A nearly allied type occurs on the Taimur peninsula, and along the whole north coast of Asia. It perhaps therefore can scarcely be doubted that it is also to be found on Novaya Zemlya, though we have not hitherto seen it there. On Spitzbergen this bird had only been found before 1872 in single specimens, but in that year, to our glad surprise, we discovered an actual ptarmigan-fell in the neighbourhood of our winter colony, immediately south of the 80th degree of lat.i.tude. It formed the haunt of probably a thousand birds; at least a couple of hundred were shot there in the course of the winter. They probably breed there under stones in summer, and creeping in among the stones pa.s.s the winter there, at certain seasons doubtless in a kind of torpid state.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PTARMIGAN FELL. Mussel Bay on Spitzbergen, after a photograph taken by A. Envall on the 21st June, 1872. ]
The mode of life of the Spitzbergen ptarmigan is thus widely different from that of the Scandinavian ptarmigan, and its flesh also tastes differently. For the bird is exceedingly fat, and its flesh, as regards flavour, is intermediate between black-c.o.c.k and fat goose.[65] We may infer from this that it is a great delicacy.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SNOWY OWL. Swedish, Fjelluggla (Strix nyctea L.) ]
When I was returning, in the autumn of 1872, from an excursion of some length along the sh.o.r.e of Wijde Bay, I fell in with one of our sportsmen, who had in his hand a white bird marked with black spots, which he showed me as a "very large ptarmigan." In doing so, however, he fell into a great ornithological mistake, for it was not a ptarmigan at all, but another kind of bird, similarly marked in winter, namely, _fjellugglan_, the walrus-hunter"s _isoern_, the snowy owl (_Strix nyctea_, L.). It evidently breeds and winters at the ptarmigan-fell, which it appears to consider as its own poultry-yard. In fact, the marking of this bird of prey is so similar to that of its victim that the latter can scarcely perhaps know how to take care of itself. On Spitzbergen the snowy owl is very rare; but on Novaya Zemlya and the North coast of Asia--where the lemming, which is wanting on Spitzbergen, occurs in great crowds--it is common. It commonly sits immoveable on an open mountain slope, visible at a great distance, from the strong contrast of its white colour with the greyish-green ground. Even, in the brightest sunshine, unlike other owls, it sees exceedingly well. It is very shy, and therefore difficult to shoot. The snow ptarmigan and the snowy owl are the only birds of which we know with certainty that they winter on Spitzbergen, and both are, according to Hedenstrom, native to the New Siberian Islands (_Otrywki o Sibiri_, p. 112).
In the cultivated regions of Europe the larger mammalia are so rare that most men in their whole lifetime have never seen a wild mammal so large as a dog. This is not the case in the high north. The number of the larger mammalia here is indeed no longer so large as in the seventeenth century, when their capture yielded an abundant living to from twenty to thirty thousand men; but sport on Novaya Zemlya and Spitzbergen still supports several hundred hunters, and during summer scarcely a day pa.s.ses without a visitor of the coasts of these islands seeing a seal or a walrus, a reindeer or a Polar bear. In order to present a true picture of the Polar traveller"s surroundings and mode of life, it is absolutely necessary to give a sketch of the occurrence and mode of life of the wild mammalia in the Polar lands.
I shall make a beginning with the reindeer. This graminivorous animal goes nearly as far to the north as the land in the old world.
It was not, indeed, observed by Payer on Franz Josef Land, but traces of the reindeer were seen by us on the clay beds at Cape Chelyuskin; remnants of reindeer were observed at Barents" winter harbour on the northernmost part of Novaya Zemlya; some very fat animals were killed by Norwegian walrus-hunters on King Karl"s Land east of Spitzbergen, and for some years back the reindeer was very numerous even on the north coast of North East Land, and on Castren"s, Parry"s, Marten"s, and Phipps" Islands, lying still farther to the north. Although these regions are situated between 80 and 81 N.L., the reindeer evidently thrives there very well, and finds, even in winter, abundant food on the mountain slopes swept clear of snow by storms, as is shown by the good condition in which several of the animals shot by us were, and by the numerous reindeer traces and tracks which we saw on Castren"s Island in the month of May, 1873. Nor does a winter temperature of -40 to -50 appear to agree particularly ill with these relatives of the deer of the south. Even the Norwegian reindeer can bear the climate of Spitzbergen, for some of the selected draught reindeer which I took with me to Spitzbergen in 1872, and which made their escape soon after they were landed, were shot by hunters in 1875. They then pastured in company with wild reindeer, and were, like them, very fat. It is remarkable that the reindeer, notwithstanding the devastating pursuit to which it is exposed on Spitzbergen,[66] is found there in much larger numbers than on North Novaya Zemlya or the Taimur peninsula, where it is almost protected from the attacks of the hunter. Even on the low-lying part of South Novaya Zemlya, the reindeer, notwithstanding the abundance of the summer pasture, is so rare that, when one lands there, any reindeer-hunting is scarcely to be counted on. It first occurs in any considerable numbers farther to the north, on both sides of Matotschkin Schar.
It deserves to be mentioned here that three hundred years ago, when the north part of Novaya Zemlya was for the first time visited by man, reindeer do not appear to have been more numerous there than now. In the narrative of Barents" third voyage (De Veer, _Diarium Nautic.u.m_, 21st June, 1506) it is expressly stated: "Here it may be remarked that; although the land, which we consider as Groenland (the present Spitzbergen), lies under and over the 80th degree of lat.i.tude, there grow there abundant leaves and gra.s.s, and there are found there such animals as eat gra.s.s, as _reindeer_, while on the other hand, on Novaya Zemlya, under the 76th degree of lat.i.tude, there are neither leaves nor gra.s.s nor any gra.s.s-eating animal."
After this, however, traces of reins were found even at the winter station; a bear, for instance, was killed that had devoured a reindeer.
On Spitzbergen the reindeer have been considerably diminished in numbers by the hunting, first of the Dutch and English, and afterwards of the Russians and Norwegians. In the northwestern part of the island, where the Dutch had their train-boiling establishments, the animal has been completely extirpated.[67] It still, however, occurs on Ice Fjord in very great numbers, which, were the animal protected, would speedily increase.
That so devastating a pursuit as that which goes on year after year on Spitzbergen can be carried on without the animal being extirpated, has even given rise to the hypothesis of an immigration from Novaya Zemlya. But since I have become better acquainted with the occurrence of the reindeer in the latter place, this mode of explanation does not appear to me to be correct. If, therefore, as several circ.u.mstances in fact indicate, an immigration of reindeer to Spitzbergen does take place, it must be from some still unknown Polar land situated to the north-north-east. In the opinion of some of the walrus-hunters there are indications that this unknown land is inhabited, for it has repeatedly been stated that _marked_ reindeer have been taken on Spitzbergen. The first statement on this point is to be found in Witsen (_Noort ooster gedeelte van Asia en Europa_, 1705, ii. page 904), where the reins are said to have been marked on the horns and the ears; and I have myself heard hunters, who in Norway were well acquainted with the care of reindeer, state positively that the ears of some of the Spitzbergen reindeer they shot were clipped--probably, however, the whole has originated from the ears having been marked by frost. That no immigration to Spitzbergen of reindeer from Novaya Zemlya takes place, is shown besides by the fact that the Spitzbergen reindeer appears to belong to a race differing from the Novaya Zemlya reindeer, and distinguished by its smaller size, shorter head and legs, and plumper and fatter body.
[Ill.u.s.tration: REINDEER PASTURE. Green Harbour on Spitzbergen, after a photograph taken by A. Envall on the 20th July, 1873. ]
The life of the wild reindeer is best known from Spitzbergen. During summer it betakes itself to the gra.s.sy plains in the ice-free valleys of the island, in late autumn it withdraws--according to the walrus-hunters" statements--to the sea-coast, in order to eat the seaweed that is thrown up on the beach, and in winter it goes back to the lichen-clad mountain heights in the interior of the country, where it appears to thrive exceedingly well, though the cold during winter must be excessively severe; for when the reindeer in spring return to the coast they are still very fat, but some weeks afterwards, when the snow has frozen, on the surface, and a crust of ice makes it difficult for them to get at the mountain sides, they become so poor as scarcely to be eatable. In summer, however, they speedily eat themselves back into condition, and in autumn they are so fat that they would certainly take prizes at an exhibition of fat cattle. In the museum at Tromsoe there is preserved the backbone of a reindeer, shot on King Karl"s Land, which had a layer of fat seven to eight centimetres in thickness on the loin.
The reindeer, in regions where it has been much hunted, is very shy, but, if the ground is not quite even, one can creep within range, if the precaution be taken not to approach it from the windward. During the rutting season, which falls in late autumn, it sometimes happens that the reindeer attacks the hunter.
The Spitzbergen reindeer is not tormented, like the reindeer in Lapland and on Novaya Zemlya, by "gorm" (inch-long larvae of a fly, which are developed under the animal"s skin). Its flesh is also better than that of the Lapp reindeer. None of the contagious diseases which of late years have raged so dreadfully among the reindeer in northern Europe has ever, at least during the last fifty years, been common on Spitzbergen.
The Polar bear occurs princ.i.p.ally on coasts and islands which are surrounded by drift-ice, often even upon ice-fields far out at sea, for his best hunting is among the ice-floes. Now he is rather rare on the south-western coasts of Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya which are almost free of ice during summer, but more common on the northern parts of these islands, which are almost always surrounded by ice. Thus for instance during my many landings at Horn Sound, Bell Sound, Ice Fjord, Foreland Sound, and King"s Bay, on the west coast of Spitzbergen, I have never seen a single bear. On the other hand, bears were seen at nearly every resting-place during the boat voyage I made in 1861 with Torell in Hinloopen Strait and along the sh.o.r.es of the most northerly islands on Spitzbergen, also during the sledge journey which Palander and I made in the spring of 1873 round North East Land. The Polar bear is besides found everywhere along the north coast of Asia and America, apparently in greater numbers the farther north we go. Sometimes too, first on ice and then swimming, he has reached the north coast of Norway, for instance, in March 1853, when, according to a statement in _Tromsoe Stiftstidende_ (No. 4 for 1869), a Polar bear was killed in Kjoellefjord in East Einmark.