The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-09-14
NO MANS LAND.
Unowned Spitzbergen Peopled Only by
 Thousand Dead.

Thousand Dead.
 The name of spitzbergen has been spoken oftener during the last few months than for many long year. The fact that the Wellman airship has beer building there is responsible for spitzbergen becoming something like q household word. Its history is roman tt,.
 During the most profitable period of the Dutch fishery, 1620-35, over 300 Dutch ships and more than 15,OOQ men annually visited sntzbergen; more than 1SOOo men were on the coast ha one summer. These conditions led to its summer co}opiz3tion
 The most remarkable of these estab- l!shmcnts w2s at Amsterdam Island, where on broad plain grew uptthe as- tonishing village of Smeerenberg, Here nearly within ten degrees of the North Pole, 79 degrees 50 minutes north, for score of years prevailed an amount of comfort and prosperity that can scarcely be credited by the visitor of to-day.
 Several hundred ships, with more than 10000 men, visited it annually, These consisted not alone of the whal- ers and land laborers, but of the camp followers who always frequent centers of great and rapid productivity. In the train of the whalers followed merchant vessels loaded with wine, brandy, tobacco and edibles unknown in the plain fare Of the hardy fishers, Shops were opened, drinking booths erected, wooden and even brick tile covered houses constructed for the la borers or visiting whalemen
 Even bakeries were constructed, and as in Holland the sound of the bak- ern's horn, announcing hot, fresh bread, drew cro@Gs of eager purchase CTS. If report errs4not even the Dutch Frau of 16SO Was sufficiently enterprise ing to visit Smeerenberg.
 The shore fisheries soon failed( about 164O). and the Dutch being driven 10 the remoter and open seas smeeren- berg fell into decadence; the furnaces Iwere demolished the copper caldrons lromoved and .iya tools and utensils of the cooper ahI Whaier disappeared; only the polar @aar remained to guard the ruins of tfe famous Spi,zbergen fair.
 But human interest in Smeerenberg did not pass away with its vanishing lhabitation, for on the shores of that bay rest the last mortal remains of Q thousand stalwart fishers who closed their lives of toll and struggle in view Iof, the icy seas.
 spitzbergen of recent years has been claiming greater attention. A coal de- pcYi; of considerable value has been found on the isanl, and it has become favorite resort fog hunters and for excursionists.
 It Is known as No Mans Land as 1t belongs to no country, Norway and | Sweden being unable to agree as to its possession, Last year about half mil lion dollars worth of oil furs and cid CT down were obtained from the island
 Some authority ought soon to take possession of the archipelago, for the game-such as reindeer, polar bears ptarmigan. geese, ducks and other birds-formerly so plentiful, is being wantonlly exterminated. A party oi tourists last summer killed more than 100 reindeer, leaving the carcasses where they fell and taking with them only few of the finest heads ant antlers Eider-duck nests are robbed of eggs, which Norway on her nor;herr coasts and Denmark in Greenland pro Ltect by law.--National Geographic Magazine