ARCTIC PICNICS.
DURING the past six weeks two invitations have been issued to the public to follow the example of the ice-loving birds and make a summer voyage for pleasure to the true Arctic seas. One comes from Norway, where a summer voyage to the region of "thick-ribbed ice" has for some years been increasingly popular. The Vasteraalen Steamship Company of Tronjem runs a steamer every week in July and the first three weeks in August from Tronjem to Hammerfest, and thence to Advent Bay in Spitzbergen. The second invitation was issued by the Orient Steam Navigation Company, one of whose steamers left Tilbury for Spitzbergen on July 22nd, and, after taking its passengers past the Polar ice-pack and to the great glaciers falling into Recherche Bay, will return to London on August 20th. The Norwegian
Company have built a house at Ice Fiord in Advent Bay, with accommodation for thirty or forty visitors, servants, and stewards. The Fram's' captain, Otto Sverdrup, famous as a hunter and Arctic navigator, takes charge of the vessel. Sport forms part of the Norse programme, for Spitzbergen has for some years attracted visitors from Scandinavia to shoot reindeer, ptarmigan, and white bears, and to fish for whales and -seals. Boats and sealing gear are kept at headquarters, and the famous breeding haunts of the eider-deck, auks, barnacle-geese, and other Arctic fowl will be within reach. The English Company dwell more especially on the mental exhilaration and physical refreshment caused by the migra- tion to regions where the never-setting sun shines day and night on the everlasting ice, where the primitive landscape chows no trace of man's handiwork, where the air has been .purified by ages of frost, and is untainted by the dust of the .earth, for man never defiles or disturbs the surfaces of the soil, and where the silence of the void is only broken by the plunge of glaciers into the Arctic Ocean, or the cries of the Arctic fowl.
Why Spitzbergen, instead of the North Cape or the Lapland .coast ? is a question which may occur in connection with the new project. The essence and interest of the proposal lie in the fact that it is a visit to real Arctic scenery, and that the 'nearest point to temperate Europe at which this can be enjoyed is in the Spitzbergen Archipelago. In the first place, the islands are four hundred miles nearer to the Pole than the North Cape, and within an average of one hundred ,miles of the ice-pack ; and, secondly, the North Coast of Norway, though geographically well within the Arctic circle, is not Arctic at all. The Gulf Stream and the forcing heat of the Northern summer have converted it into a temperate coast. Its waters are warm, it is inhabited by man, its glacial /period has passed away. In summer the North Cape and the "Land of the Midnight Sun" are merely temperate Norway shorn of timber. Familiar flowers and birds, villages, fishing. boats, and fishing towns like Vardo, with European civilisa- tion, recall the traveller's thoughts daily to the life of every day. But the voyager to Spitzbergen passes out of one familiar world into another so different that it might be part of another planet, a world whose plants are begotten in six months' darkness and forced to life by six months' sun, whose birds and animals are the born children of the ice, and return there yearly by air or water to enjoy their summer by the Arctic Sea.
The Spitzbergeu region is not a mere group of islets. Its area is as large as that of Ireland. Northwards the Arctic current keeps it in the grip of the Polar cold. On its south side the fringe of the Gulf Stream tempers the air, and causes the one climatic drawback to the Spitzbergen summer, dense and clinging fogs, which brood over the adjacent sea. But within the fog-screen the sun shines bright and clear on the snow-peaks, out of a sky of amethyst, and the landscape looks much as if the whole mass of the Swiss Alps had been sunk in the Polar sea to a point above the level of tree growth. The submerged valleys become fiords, the glaciers —far larger than any on the Alps—slide down to these fiords, and break off in icebergs ; ptarmigan, or true grouse, according to Mr. Abel Chapman, haunt the lower range, and in place of chamois, reindeer are found in most of the valleys. The reindeer are larger than those of Norway. How either they or the grouse subsist in the winter is one of the mysteries of animal life in the island ; but the fact that they do survive shows that we are not yet acquainted with the limits of vegetable life in Spitzbergen. The area of the islands is too large and too little known to speak with any certainty of their capacity as a sporting reserve ; but it is known that game is numerous in some parts, and of a kind and among surroundings entirely new to ordinary experience. The Polar bears and walrus have been much killed down; but when the ice-pack and drift-ice touch the land, with them come the seal, the polar bear, and the walrus to restock the island. Ten years ago fifty polar bears were shot by one hunter in Hinlopen Straits, between the two main islands. The chance of shooting two or three polar bears, of hunting the walrus, and the certainty of shooting reindeer under the Arctic sun on an uninhabited shore, offered within eleven days' voyage of London, have no parallel in any part of the globe. It is probable that before long measures will be taken to preserve the game, and though this will not extend to the
polar bears, portraits of which, engaged in biting the heads of prostrate gentlemen voyagers, or laying a friendly paw on their arms previous to making a meal off them, lend such lively interest to De Veer's account of the early discoverers' voyages, the increase of reindeer and seals is certain to lead to an increase in the numbers of the animal that preys upon them. Ice-fowl swarm in certain portions of the coast, especially in Ice Sound, Bell Sound, Horn Sound, and the Alkefjeld, near Lomme Bay. The three former are all on the coast of West Spitzbergen, to the south of the " hotel " in Advent Bay. Here are the home of the " rotches," and of the most thoroughly Arctic of all birds, the ivory gull. There is an immense colony of little-auks in Magdalen Bay, to the north of the West Island, and on the flat islets in Ice Sound thousands of eider- duck breed. The past value and numbers of game and fowl may be gathered from the history of the islands, so far as human interest has been concerned with them. Right-whales were so numerous in the seventeenth century that ten thousand whalers' crews used to meet annually on the coast during the summer. In 1697 the Datch whalers alone caught one thousand nine hundred and fifty right-whales. The remains of their houses still exist on the shores of " Smeer- ingberg," the old whalers' headquarters. In time the right-whales were nearly killed off, and Spitzbergen was left to the polar bears. Then Russian hunters sailed thither, and killed such numbers of reindeer, walrus, and Arctic fox that these grew scarce, and the Russian hunters moved off to Novaya Zembla. When the game recovered, the Norwegians began to visit the island, partly for sport, partly for profit; and it is due to the reports circulated by them that the Vasteraalens Company organised their weekly expeditions to the islands. Salmon are found in the rivers and fiords, but so far they have only been netted, as the glacier water is too muddy for using the fly. Bat other whales than right-whales are still found on the coast, and one whaling station is maintained. This opens a chance for the most dangerous and exciting of all sea sports. For the Alpine climber there is endless opportunity on the ice-covered peaks and enormous glaciers ; and for the botanist and geologist there are one hundred and twenty species of flowering plants, many of which are not found elsewhere, and at the entrance of Recherche Bay is a "fossil herbarium," the richest in the world; and all this, as we may again point out, within eleven days' voyage from Tilbury Docks ; a new climate, a nightless summer lasting from April 20th to August 22nd, a new fauna and flora, and new forms of sport. Soon we may expect a regular service to the islands, and moveable headquarters, in large steamers which will act as large hotels or receiving ships. To them will be attached smaller steamers, steam-launches, boats, and sub- sidiary huts on shore, with guides, fishermen, and hunters, and a new Polar playground will be added to Europe.
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