In ordinary summers the west side of Spitsbergen is clear of ice, not so the eastern side, the difference being due to the Gulf Stream, which, though evidently failing, is traceable along the coast round Hakluyt Headland and up to the ice barrier. In addition to this there is the general cause, whatever it may be, which makes the western coasts of all Arctic lands, isolated or not, warmer than the eastern. Greenland, for instance, is more approachable in summer from Davis Strait than from the Greenland Sea, Novaya Zemlya from Barents Sea than from Kara Sea, and so on with all the islands and peninsulas of Asia and America. Hence all this whaling was confined practically to the western harbours of West Spitsbergen, the largest of the group of islands. The next largest, North East Land, was never much visited except from Hinlopen Strait, though the Russians from time to time took some interest in the north and east harbours, and would have taken more, for it abounded in reindeer, if the ice had not made the landing an enterprise of some difficulty. On the east coast of North East Land, in 1743, a Russian whaler was caught in the pack, and the mate, Alexis Himkoff, remembering that a house had been built there some years before, went on shore with his godson, Ivan Himkoff, and two sailors, Scharapoff and Weregin, in search of it, in case the ship should have to be abandoned. They found the house, but, on returning to the shore next morning, could see nothing of the ship, which had apparently been carried away and crushed in the ice. They had brought with them a musket, a powder-horn with twelve charges of powder, twelve bullets, an axe, a small kettle, a bag with about twenty pounds of flour, a knife, a tinder-box and tinder, a bladder of tobacco, and every man had his pipe. That was their outfit. The house was thirty-six feet in length, and eighteen in height and breadth. It contained a small antechamber about twelve feet broad, which had two doors, one to close it from the outer air, the other admitting to the inner room in which was a Russian stove, a kind of oven without a chimney, serving at will for heating, for baking, or for sleeping on. Realising that they had a long stay before them, they began by shooting twelve reindeer, one for each bullet. They then repaired the house, stopping up all the crevices with moss; and they then laid in a store of fuel from the driftwood, there being no trees on the island. On the beach they found some boards with nails in them, and a long iron hook and a few other pieces of old iron. And also there was a root of a fir tree in shape not unlike a bow. Those were the materials they had to make the best of.