The world here and there Author:Charles Dickens Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: (Our jiantniu $(ltp aramg tjif YONDER is the coast of Norway; we shall soon be at Spitz- bergen. The " Phantom " is fitted out for Arctic exploration, with in... more »structions to find her way, by the north-west, to Behring Straits, and take the South Pole on her passage home. Just now, we steer due north, and yonder is the coast of Norway. From that coast parted Hugh Willoughby, three hundred years ago; the first of our countrymen who wrought an ice-bound highway to Cathay. Two years afterwards his ships were found, in the haven of Arzina, in Lapland, by some Russian fishermen; near and about them Willoughby and his companions—seventy dead men. The ships were freighted with their frozen crews, and sailed for England; but, " being unstaunch, as it is supposed, by their two years' wintering in Lapland, sunk, by the way, with their dead, and them also that brought them." Ice floats about us now, and here is a whale blowing; a whale, too, very near Spitzbergen. When first Spitsbergen was discovered, in the good old times, there were whales here in abundance ; then a hundred Dutch ships, in a crowd, might go to work, and boats might jostle with each other, and the only thing deficient would be stowage room for all the produce of the fishery. Now one ship may have the whole field to itself, and travel home with an imperfect cargo. It was fine fun in the good old times; there was no need to cruize. Coppers and boilers were fitted on the island, and little colonies about them, in the fishing season, had nothing to do but tow the whales in, with a boat, as fast asthey were wanted by the copper. No wonder that so enviable a Tom Tidler's ground was claimed by all who had a love for gold and silver. The English called it theirs, for they first fished; the Dutch said, nay, but the Island was of...« less