Note 205 — INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION.

One further curious instance has only recently come to our knowledge. Captain Beechey, when speaking (p. 257) of the bears which were killed by the Dutch while in their winter quarters, says that on opening one of them “there was found in its stomach ‘part of a buck, with the hair and skinne and all, which not long before she had torne and devoured,’ a fact (he adds) which I mention only to rectify an error in supposing deer did not frequent Nova Zembla.”

Did the fact of the existence of deer in Novaya Zemlya rest upon this statement alone, it would have but a weak foundation; for, as is shown in page 182, note 3, the original Dutch is “stucken van robben, met huijt ende hayr”—“pieces of seals, with the skin and hair.” But, in truth, the existence of deer in that country is established by the incontrovertible evidence adduced in the notes to pages 5, 83, and 104; to which has to be added the fact recorded in the Appendix, p. 269, that when Hudson and his crew were on the coast of Novaya Zemlya in 1608, they saw there numerous signs of deer, and on one occasion “a herd of white deere of ten in a companie;” so that they actually gave to the place the name of Deere Point. ↑