This wintering of the _Salutation_ men occurred when the Spitsbergen fisheries were most flourishing, the prosperity continuing for seven more years. So lucrative was the trade that on Amsterdam Island under Hakluyt Headland, within fifteen miles of 80° north latitude, about as far from the North Pole as St. Malo is from John o' Groat's, there sprang up as a summer resort the Dutch village of Smeerenberg. Such was the bustle produced by the yearly visit of two or three hundred double-manned vessels, containing from twelve thousand to eighteen thousand men, that this village of the farthest north was as busy as a manufacturing town. The incitement of prices proportionate to the latitude attracted hundreds of annual settlers, who throve on the sale of brandy, wine, tobacco, and sundries to the whale-fishers in shops of all varieties, including bakehouses, where the blowing of a horn let the sailors know that the bread had just been drawn hot from the oven. In fact, hot rolls and every delicacy could be had in Smeerenberg, which the Dutch averred was as flourishing as Batavia, founded by them a few years before. And when winter was just about due every man—and woman—went back to Holland. But the life of Smeerenberg was a short and a merry one, for in 1640 the shore fisheries were failing, and a year or so afterwards the lingerers of its last season left it for good, clearing out from its houses of brick and wood, demolishing its furnaces, removing its copper cauldrons and coolers and casks and everything that could be taken away, and leaving it in desolation to be occupied in the next and subsequent summers by polar bears. Like all seaside resorts it had its rival. Close by is the Cookery-of-Haarlem, abandoned at the same time, but rather more hurriedly. When Martens went there on the 15th of July, 1671, he found four houses still standing, in one of which were "several barrels or kardels that were quite decayed, the ice standing in the same shape the vessels had been made of: an anvil, smith's tongs, and other tools belonging to the cookery, were frozen up in the ice; the kettle was still standing as it was set, and the wooden troughs stood by it." Behind these houses "are high mountains," he continues, "if one climbeth upon these, as we do on others, and doth not mark every step with chalk, one doth not know how to get down again: when you go up you think it to be very easy to be down; but when you descend it is very difficult and dangerous, so that many have fallen and lost their lives." Absurd as this chalking of the steps may seem, there have been many who have taken the hint from the careful Martens when climbing in Spitsbergen, and many who have regretted not having done so.