The Russians took the lead in Spitsbergen in the eighteenth century, their plan being to form a depôt in Bell Sound. In 1764 Lieut. Nemtinoff was sent to build houses and to land stores there, to form a base whence to push through the ice to the Pacific. In the following year the expedition under Captain Vassili Tschitschagoff, of which Nemtinoff’s voyage was the precursor, left Archangel. But Tschitschagoff had the misfortune to meet with a bad ice year and did little or nothing. He tried again in 1766 and got as far north as 80° 28′, but he was stopped by the ice, and the project was given up as hopeless. A party of Russians in charge of stores had twice wintered in Bell Sound. For a century the eastern side of Spitsbergen remained almost unknown. It is to the Norwegian sealing captains, and to Professor Mohn of Christiania, who watched over and utilised their work, that most of our knowledge of this side is due. The Norwegian fishery dates from about 1820, but for many years they kept on the west side, only by degrees working along the north coast to the eastward. In 1863, however, the adventurous Captain Carlsen completed the circumnavigation of Spitsbergen for the first time. In the next year Captains Tobiesen, Aarström, and Mathilas were not so fortunate. They made their way down the east coast, but, becoming closely beset, were obliged to abandon their vessels and retreat in boats up Hinlopen Strait, traversing 700 miles before they were picked up. In 1872 Captain Altman sailed up the east side from the south, and sighted Wyche’s Land, which was discovered by the English in 1617. It proved to be composed of three islands. Captain Nils Johnsen succeeded in landing on one of these islands, and named a lofty cliff Cape Nordenskiöld. In 1872 Captain Nilsen in the _Freia_ also sighted the Wyche Islands, naming a high mountain Harfagrehangen, it being the thousandth anniversary of Norway’s union into one kingdom. The scientific researches of the Swedes in Spitsbergen were begun in 1858. They were undertaken to institute a preliminary survey for measuring an arc of meridian, and also for geological and biological collections. In 1864 Nordenskiöld and Duner took astronomical observations at eighty different positions on shore, and fixed the heights of numerous mountain peaks. In 1868 the Swedes, in the steamer _Sofia_, reached the latitude of 81° 42′ N. and in 1870 Baron von Heuglin and Count Zeil, in a vessel commanded by the Norwegian captain Nils Isaksen, explored Edge and Barentsz Islands, and Freeman strait, which divides them. They found a vast accumulation of drift-wood on the southern shore of the strait.