NORTH-WEST PASSAGE***


Transcribed from the 1892 Cassell & Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org

                       CASSELL'S NATIONAL LIBRARY.





VOYAGES
IN SEARCH OF THE
NORTH-WEST PASSAGE.


                         _From the Collection of_
                             RICHARD HAKLUYT.

                       CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
                      _LONDON_, _PARIS & MELBOURNE_.
                                  1892.




INTRODUCTION.


Thirty-five years ago I made a voyage to the Arctic Seas in what Chaucer
calls

       A little bote
    No bigger than a manne's thought;

it was a Phantom Ship that made some voyages to different parts of the
world which were recorded in early numbers of Charles Dickens's
"Household Words."  As preface to Richard Hakluyt's records of the first
endeavour of our bold Elizabethan mariners to find North-West Passage to
the East, let me repeat here that old voyage of mine from No. 55 of
"Household Words," dated the 12th of April, 1851: The _Phantom_ is fitted
out for Arctic exploration, with instructions 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 Spitzbergen 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 cruise.  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 as they 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 their discovery; Danes, Hamburghers, Bisayans, Spaniards,
and French put in their claims; and at length it was agreed to make
partitions.  The numerous bays and harbours which indent the coast were
divided among the rival nations; and, to this day, many of them bear,
accordingly, such names as English Bay, Danes Bay, and so forth.  One bay
there is, with graves in it, named Sorrow.  For it seemed to the fishers
most desirable, if possible, to plant upon this island permanent
establishments, and condemned convicts were offered, by the Russians,
life and pardon, if they would winter in Spitzbergen.  They agreed; but,
when they saw the icy mountains and the stormy sea, repented, and went
back, to meet a death exempt from torture.  The Dutch tempted free men,
by high rewards, to try the dangerous experiment.  One of their victims
left a journal, which describes his suffering and that of his companions.
Their mouths, he says, became so sore that, if they had food, they could
not eat; their limbs were swollen and disabled with excruciating pain;
they died of scurvy.  Those who died first were coffined by their dying
friends; a row of coffins was found, in the spring, each with a man in
it; two men uncoffined, side by side, were dead upon the floor.  The
journal told how once the traces of a bear excited their hope of fresh
meat and amended health; how, with a lantern, two or three had limped
upon the track, until the light became extinguished, and they came back
in despair to die.  We might speak, also, of eight English sailors, left,
by accident, upon Spitzbergen, who lived to return and tell their
winter's tale; but a long journey is before us and we must not linger on
the way.  As for our whalers, it need scarcely be related that the
multitude of whales diminished as the slaughtering went on, until it was
no longer possible to keep the coppers full.  The whales had to be
searched for by the vessels, and thereafter it was not worth while to
take the blubber to Spitzbergen to be boiled; and the different nations,
having carried home their coppers, left the apparatus of those fishing
stations to decay.

Take heed.  There is a noise like thunder, and a mountain snaps in two.
The upper half comes, crashing, grinding, down into the sea, and loosened
streams of water follow it.  The sea is displaced before the mighty heap;
it boils and scatters up a cloud of spray; it rushes back, and violently
beats upon the shore.  The mountain rises from its bath, sways to and
fro, while water pours along its mighty sides; now it is tolerably quiet,
letting crackers off as air escapes out of its cavities.  That is an
iceberg, and in that way are all icebergs formed.  Mountains of ice
formed by rain and snow--grand Arctic glaciers, undermined by the sea or
by accumulation over-balanced--topple down upon the slightest provocation
(moved by a shout, perhaps), and where they float, as this black-looking
fellow does, they need deep water.  This berg in height is about ninety
feet, and a due balance requires that a mass nine times as large as the
part visible should be submerged.  Icebergs are seen about us now which
rise two hundred feet above the water's level.

There are above head plenty of aquatic birds; ashore, or on the ice, are
bears, foxes, reindeer; and in the sea there are innumerable animals.  We
shall not see so much life near the North Pole, that is certain.  It
would be worth while to go ashore upon an islet there, near Vogel Sang,
to pay a visit to the eider-ducks.  Their nests are so abundant that one
cannot avoid treading on them.  When the duck is driven by a hungry fox
to leave her eggs, she covers them with down, in order that they may not
cool during her absence, and, moreover, glues the down into a case with a
secretion supplied to her by Nature for that purpose.  The deserted eggs
are safe, for that secretion has an odour very disagreeable to the
intruder's nose.

We still sail northward, among sheets of ice, whose boundaries are not
beyond our vision from the masthead--these are "floes;" between them we
find easy way, it is fair "sailing ice."  In the clear sky to the north a
streak of lucid white light is the reflection from an icy surface; that
is, "ice-blink," in the language of these seas.  The glare from snow is
yellow, while open water gives a dark reflection.

Northward still; but now we are in fog the ice is troublesome; a gale is
rising.  Now, if our ship had timbers they would crack, and if she had a
bell it would be tolling; if we were shouting to each other we should not
hear, the sea is in a fury.  With wild force its breakers dash against a
heaped-up wall of broken ice, that grinds and strains and battles
fiercely with the water.  This is "the pack," the edge of a great
ice-field broken by the swell.  It is a perilous and an exciting thing to
push through pack ice in a gale.

Now there is ice as far as eye can see, that is "an ice-field."  Masses
are forced up like colossal tombstones on all sides; our sailors call
them "hummocks;" here and there the broken ice displays large "holes of
water."  Shall we go on?  Upon this field, in 1827, Parry adventured with
his men to reach the North Pole, if that should be possible.  With
sledges and portable boats they laboured on through snow and over
hummocks, launching their boats over the larger holes of water.  With
stout hearts, undaunted by toil or danger, they went boldly on, though by
degrees it became clear to the leaders of the expedition that they were
almost like mice upon a treadmill cage, making a great expenditure of leg
for little gain.  The ice was floating to the south with them, as they
were walking to the north; still they went on.  Sleeping by day to avoid
the glare, and to get greater warmth during the time of rest, and
travelling by night--watch-makers' days and nights, for it was all one
polar day--the men soon were unable to distinguish noon from midnight.
The great event of one day on this dreary waste was the discovery of two
flies upon an ice hummock; these, says Parry, became at once a topic of
ridiculous importance.  Presently, after twenty-three miles' walking,
they had only gone one mile forward, the ice having industriously floated
twenty-two miles in the opposite direction; and then, after walking
forward eleven miles, they found themselves to be three miles behind the
place from which they started.  The party accordingly returned, not
having reached the Pole, not having reached the eighty-third parallel,
for the attainment of which there was a reward of a thousand pounds held
out by government.  They reached the parallel of eighty-two degrees
forty-five minutes, which was the most northerly point trodden by the
foot of man.

From that point they returned.  In those high latitudes they met with a
phenomenon, common in alpine regions, as well as at the Pole, red snow;
the red colour being caused by the abundance of a minute plant, of low
development, the last dweller on the borders of the vegetable kingdom.
More interesting to the sailors was a fat she bear which they killed and
devoured with a zeal to be repented of; for on reaching navigable sea,
and pushing in their boats to Table Island, where some stones were left,
they found that the bears had eaten all their bread, whereon the men
agreed that "Bruin was now square with them."  An islet next to Table
Island--they are both mere rocks--is the most northern land discovered.
Therefore, Parry applied to it the name of lieutenant--afterwards Sir
James--Ross.  This compliment Sir James Ross acknowledged in the most
emphatic manner, by discovering on his part, at the other Pole, the most
southern land yet seen, and giving to it the name of Parry: "Parry
Mountains."

It very probably would not be difficult, under such circumstances as Sir
W. Parry has since recommended, to reach the North Pole along this route.
Then (especially if it be true, as many believe, that there is a region
of open sea about the Pole itself) we might find it as easy to reach
Behring Straits by travelling in a straight line over the North Pole, as
by threading the straits and bays north of America.

We turn our course until we have in sight a portion of the ice-barred
eastern coast of Greenland, Shannon Island.  Somewhere about this spot in
the seventy-fifth parallel is the most northern part of that coast known
to us.  Colonel--then Captain--Sabine in the _Griper_ was landed there to
make magnetic, and other observations; for the same purpose he had
previously visited Sierra Leone.  That is where we differ from our
forefathers.  They commissioned hardy seamen to encounter peril for the
search of gold ore, or for a near road to Cathay; but our peril is
encountered for the gain of knowledge, for the highest kind of service
that can now be rendered to the human race.

Before we leave the Northern Sea, we must not omit to mention the voyage
by Spitzbergen northward, in 1818, of Captain Buchan in the _Dorothea_,
accompanied by Lieutenant Franklin, in the _Trent_.  It was Sir John
Franklin's first voyage to the Arctic regions.  This trip forms the
subject of a delightful book by Captain Beechey.

On our way to the south point of Greenland we pass near Cape North, a
point of Iceland.  Iceland, we know, is the centre of a volcanic region,
whereof Norway and Greenland are at opposite points of the circumference.
In connection with this district there is a remarkable fact; that by the
agency of subterranean forces, a large portion of Norway and Sweden is
being slowly upheaved.  While Greenland, on the west coast, as gradually
sinks into the sea, Norway rises at the rate of about four feet in a
century.  In Greenland, the sinking is so well known that the natives
never build close to the water's edge, and the Moravian missionaries more
than once have had to move farther inland the poles on which their boats
are rested.

Our Phantom Ship stands fairly now along the western coast of Greenland
into Davis Straits.  We observe that upon this western coast there is, by
a great deal, less ice than on the eastern.  That is a rule generally.
Not only the configuration of the straits and bays, but also the earth's
rotation from west to east, causes the currents here to set towards the
west, and wash the western coasts, while they act very little on the
eastern.  We steer across Davis Strait, among "an infinite number of
great countreys and islands of yce;" there, near the entrance, we find
Hudson Strait, which does not now concern us.  Islands probably separate
this well-known channel from Frobisher Strait to the north of it, yet
unexplored.  Here let us recall to mind the fleet of fifteen sail, under
Sir Martin Frobisher, in 1578, tossing about and parting company among
the ice.  Let us remember how the crew of the _Anne Frances_, in that
expedition, built a pinnace when their vessel struck upon a rock, stock,
although they wanted main timber and nails.  How they made a mimic forge,
and "for the easier making of nails, were forced to break their tongs,
gridiron, and fire-shovel, in pieces."  How Master Captain Best, in this
frail bark, with its imperfect timbers held together by the metamorphosed
gridiron and fire-shovel, continued in his duty, and did depart up the
straights as before was pretended."  How a terrific storm arose, and the
fleet parted and the intrepid captain was towed "in his small pinnesse,
at the stern of the _Michael_, thorow the raging seas; for the bark was
not able to receive, or relieve half his company."  The "tongs, gridyron,
and fire-shovell," performed their work only for as many minutes as were
absolutely necessary, for the pinnesse came no sooner aboard the ship,
and the men entred, but she presently shivered and fell in pieces, and
sunke at the ship's stern with all the poor men's furniture."

Now, too, as we sail up the strait, explored a few years after these
events by Master John Davis, how proudly we remember him as a right
worthy forerunner of those countrymen of his and ours who since have
sailed over his track.  Nor ought we to pass on without calling to mind
the melancholy fate, in 1606, of Master John Knight, driven, in the
_Hopewell_, among huge masses of ice with a tremendous surf, his rudder
knocked away, his ship half full of water, at the entrance to these
straits.  Hoping to find a harbour, he set forth to explore a large
island, and landed, leaving two men to watch the boat, while he, with
three men and the mate, set forth and disappeared over a hill.  For
thirteen hours the watchers kept their post; one had his trumpet with
him, for he was a trumpeter, the other had a gun.  They trumpeted often
and loudly; they fired, but no answer came.  They watched ashore all
night for the return of their captain and his party, "but they came not
at all."

The season is advanced.  As we sail on, the sea steams like a line-kiln,
"frost-smoke" covers it.  The water, cooled less rapidly, is warmer now
than the surrounding air, and yields this vapour in consequence.  By the
time our vessel has reached Baffin's Bay, still coasting along Greenland,
in addition to old floes and bergs, the water is beset with "pancake
ice."  That is the young ice when it first begins to cake upon the
surface.  Innocent enough it seems, but it is sadly clogging to the
ships.  It sticks about their sides like treacle on a fly's wing;
collecting unequally, it destroys all equilibrium, and impedes the
efforts of the steersman.  Rocks split on the Greenland coast with loud
explosions, and more icebergs fall.  Icebergs we soon shall take our
leave of; they are only found where there is a coast on which glaciers
can form; they are good for nothing but to yield fresh water to the
vessels; it will be all field, pack, and saltwater ice presently.

Now we are in Baffin's Bay, explored in the voyages of Bylot and Baffin,
1615-16.  When, in 1817, a great movement in the Greenland ice caused
many to believe that the northern passages would be found comparatively
clear; and when, in consequence of this impression, Sir John Barrow
succeeded in setting afoot that course of modern Arctic exploration which
has been continued to the present day, Sir John Ross was the first man
sent to find the North-West Passage.  Buchan and Parry were commissioned
at the same the to attempt the North Sea route.  Sir John Ross did little
more on that occasion than effect a survey of Baffin's Bay, and prove the
accuracy of the ancient pilot.  In the extreme north of the bay there is
an inlet or a channel, called by Baffin Smith's Sound; this Sir John saw,
but did not enter.  It never yet has been explored.  It may be an inlet
only; but it is also very possible that by this channel ships might get
into the Polar Sea and sail by the north shore of Greenland to
Spitzbergen.  Turning that corner, and descending along the western coast
of Baffin's Bay, there is another inlet called Jones' Sound by Baffin,
also unexplored.  These two inlets, with their very British titles, Smith
and Jones, are of exceeding interest.  Jones' Sound may lead by a back
way to Melville Island.  South of Jones' Sound there is a wide break in
the shore, a great sound, named by Baffin, Lancaster's, which Sir John
Ross, in that first expedition, failed also to explore.  Like our
transatlantic friends at the South Pole, he laid down a range of clouds
as mountains, and considered the way impervious; so he came home.  Parry
went out next year, as a lieutenant, in command of his first and most
successful expedition.  He sailed up Lancaster Sound, which was in that
year (1819) unusually clear of ice; and he is the discoverer whose track
we now follow in our Phantom Ship.  The whole ground being new, he had to
name the points of country right and left of him.  The way was broad and
open, due west, a most prosperous beginning for a North-West Passage.  If
this continued, he would soon reach Behring Strait.  A broad channel to
the right, directed, that is to say, southward, he entered on the Prince
of Wales's birthday, and so called it the "Prince Regent's Inlet."  After
exploring this for some miles, he turned back to resume his western
course, for still there was a broad strait leading westward.  This second
part of Lancaster Sound he called after the Secretary of the Admiralty
who had so indefatigably laboured to promote the expeditions, Barrow's
Strait.  Then he came to a channel, turning to the right or northward,
and he named that Wellington Channel.  Then he had on his right hand ice,
islands large and small, and intervening channels; on the left, ice, and
a cape visible, Cape Walker.  At an island, named after the First Lord of
the Admiralty Melville Island, the great frozen wilderness barred farther
progress.  There he wintered.  On the coast of Melville Island they had
passed the latitude of one hundred and ten degrees, and the men had
become entitled to a royal bounty of five thousand pounds.  This group of
islands Parry called North Georgian, but they are usually called by his
own name, Parry Islands.  This was the first European winter party in the
Arctic circle.  Its details are familiar enough.  How the men cut in
three days, through ice seven inches thick, a canal two miles and a half
long, and so brought the ships into safe harbour.  How the genius of
Parry equalled the occasion; how there was established a theatre and a
_North Georgian Gazette_, to cheer the tediousness of a night which
continued for two thousand hours.  The dreary, dazzling waste in which
there was that little patch of life, the stars, the fog, the moonlight,
the glittering wonder of the northern lights, in which, as Greenlanders
believe, souls of the wicked dance tormented, are familiar to us.  The
she-bear stays at home; but the he-bear hungers, and looks in vain for a
stray seal or walrus--woe to the unarmed man who meets him in his hungry
mood!  Wolves are abroad, and pretty white arctic foxes.  The reindeer
have sought other pasture-ground.  The thermometer runs down to more than
sixty degrees below freezing, a temperature tolerable in calm weather,
but distressing in a wind.  The eye-piece of the telescope must be
protected now with leather, for the skin is destroyed that comes in
contact with cold metal.  The voice at a mile's distance can be heard
distinctly.  Happy the day when first the sun is seen to graze the edge
of the horizon; but summer must come, and the heat of a constant day must
accumulate, and summer wane, before the ice is melted.  Then the ice
cracks, like cannons over-charged, and moves with a loud grinding noise.
But not yet is escape to be made with safety.  After a detention of ten
months, Parry got free; but, in escaping, narrowly missed the destruction
of both ships, by their being "nipped" between the mighty mass and the
unyielding shore.  What animals are found on Melville Island we may judge
from the results of sport during ten months' detention.  The island
exceeds five thousand miles square, and yielded to the gun, three musk
oxen, twenty-four deer, sixty-eight hares, fifty-three geese, fifty-nine
ducks, and one hundred and forty-four ptarmigans, weighing together three
thousand seven hundred and sixty-six pounds--not quite two ounces of meat
per day to every man.  Lichens, stunted grass, saxifrage, and a feeble
willow, are the plants of Melville Island, but in sheltered nooks there
are found sorrel, poppy, and a yellow buttercup.  Halos and double suns
are very common consequences of refraction in this quarter of the world.
Franklin returned from his first and most famous voyage with his men all
safe and sound, except the loss of a few fingers, frost-bitten.  We sail
back only as far as Regent's Inlet, being bound for Behring Strait.

The reputation of Sir John Ross being clouded by discontent expressed
against his first expedition, Felix Booth, a rich distiller, provided
seventeen thousand pounds to enable his friend to redeem his credit.  Sir
John accordingly, in 1829, went out in the _Victory_, provided with
steam-machinery that did not answer well.  He was accompanied by Sir
James Ross, his nephew.  He it was who, on this occasion, first surveyed
Regent's Inlet, down which we are now sailing with our Phantom Ship.  The
coast on our right hand, westward, which Parry saw, is called North
Somerset, but farther south, where the inlet widens, the land is named
Boothia Felix.  Five years before this, Parry, in his third voyage, had
attempted to pass down Regent's Inlet, where among ice and storm, one of
his ships, the _Hecla_, had been driven violently ashore, and of
necessity abandoned.  The stores had been removed, and Sir John was able
now to replenish his own vessel from them.  Rounding a point at the
bottom of Prince Regent's Inlet, we find Felix Harbour, where Sir John
Ross wintered.  His nephew made from this point scientific explorations;
discovered a strait, called after him the Strait of James Ross, and on
the northern shore of this strait, on the main land of Boothia, planted
the British flag on the Northern Magnetic Pole.  The ice broke up, so did
the _Victory_; after a hairbreadth escape, the party found a searching
vessel and arrived home after an absence of four years and five months,
Sir John Ross having lost his ship, and won his reputation, The friend in
need was made a baronet for his munificence; Sir John was reimbursed for
all his losses, and the crew liberally taken care of.  Sir James Ross had
a rod and flag signifying "Magnetic Pole," given to him for a new crest,
by the Heralds' College, for which he was no doubt greatly the better.

We have sailed northward to get into Hudson Strait, the high road into
Hudson Bay.  Along the shore are Esquimaux in boats, extremely active,
but these filthy creatures we pass by; the Esquimaux in Hudson Strait are
like the <DW64>s of the coast, demoralised by intercourse with European
traders.  These are not true pictures of the loving children of the
north.  Our "Phantom" floats on the wide waters of Hudson Bay--the grave
of its discoverer.  Familiar as the story is of Henry Hudson's fate, for
John King's sake how gladly we repeat it.  While sailing on the waters he
discovered, in 1611, his men mutinied; the mutiny was aided by Henry
Green, a prodigal, whom Hudson had generously shielded from ruin.
Hudson, the master, and his son, with six sick or disabled members of the
crew, were driven from their cabins, forced into a little shallop, and
committed helpless to the water and the ice.  But there was one stout
man, John King, the carpenter, who stepped into the boat, abjuring his
companions, and chose rather to die than even passively be partaker in so
foul a crime.  John King, we who live after will remember you.

Here on aim island, Charlton Island, near our entrance to the bay, in
1631, wintered poor Captain James with his wrecked crew.  This is a point
outside the Arctic circle, but quite cold enough.  Of nights, with a good
fire in the house they built, hoar frost covered their beds, and the
cook's water in a metal pan before the fire was warm on one side and
froze on the other.  Here "it snowed and froze extremely, at which time
we, looking from the shore towards the ship, she appeared a piece of ice
in the fashion of a ship, or a ship resembling a piece of ice."  Here the
gunner, who hand lost his leg, besought that, "for the little the he had
to live, he might drink sack altogether."  He died and was buried in the
ice far from the vessel, but when afterwards two more were dead of
scurvy, and the others, in a miserable state, were working with faint
hope about their shattered vessel, the gunner was found to have returned
home to the old vessel; his leg had penetrated through a port-hole.  They
"digged him clear out, and he was as free from noisomeness," the record
says, "as when we first committed him to the sea.  This alteration had
the ice, and water, and time, only wrought on him, that his flesh would
slip up and down upon his bones, like a glove on a man's hand.  In the
evening we buried him by the others."  These worthy souls, laid up with
the agonies of scurvy, knew that in action was their only hope; they
forced their limbs to labour, among ice and water, every day.  They set
about the building of a boat, but the hard frozen wood had broken their
axes, so they made shift with the pieces.  To fell a tree, it was first
requisite to light in fire around it, and the carpenter could only labour
with his wood over a fire, or else it was like stone under his tools.
Before the boat was made they buried the carpenter.  The captain exhorted
them to put their trust in God; "His will be done.  If it be our fortune
to end our days here, we are as near Heaven as in England.  They all
protested to work to the utmost of their strength, and that they would
refuse nothing that I should order them to do to the utmost hazard of
their lives.  I thanked them all."  Truly the North Pole has its
triumphs.  If we took no account of the fields of trade opened by our
Arctic explorers, if we thought nothing of the wants of science in
comparison with the lives lost in supplying them, is not the loss of life
a gain, which proves and tests the fortitude of noble hearts, and teaches
us respect for human nature?  All the lives that have been lost among
these Polar regions are less in number than the dead upon a battle-field.
The battle-field inflicted shame upon our race--is it with shame that our
hearts throb in following these Arctic heroes?  March 31st, says Captain
James, "was very cold, with snow and hail, which pinched our sick men
more than any time this year.  This evening, being May eve, we returned
late from our work to our house, and made a good fire, and chose ladies,
and ceremoniously wore their names in our caps, endeavouring to revive
ourselves by any means.  On the 15th, I manured a little patch of ground
that was bare of snow, and sowed it with pease, hoping to have some
shortly to eat, for as yet we could see no green thing to comfort us."
Those pease saved the party; as they came up the young shoots were boiled
and eaten, so their health began to mend, and they recovered from their
scurvy.  Eventually, after other perils, they succeeded in making their
escape.

A strait, called Sir Thomas Rowe's Welcome, leads due north out of Hudson
Bay, being parted by Southampton Island from the strait through which we
entered.  Its name is quaint, for so was its discoverer, Luke Fox, a
worthy man, addicted much to euphuism.  Fox sailed from London in the
same year in which James sailed from Bristol.  They were rivals.  Meeting
in Davis Straits, Fox dined on board his friendly rival's vessel, which
was very unfit for the service upon which it went.  The sea washed over
them and came into the cabin, so says Fox, "sauce would not have been
wanted if there had been roast mutton."  Luke Fox, being ice-bound and in
peril, writes, "God thinks upon our imprisonment within a _supersedeas_;"
but he was a good and honourable man as wall as euphuist.  His "Sir
Thomas Rowe's Welcome" leads into Fox Channel: our "Phantom Ship" is
pushing through the welcome passes on the left-hand Repulse Bay.  This
portion of the Arctic regions, with Fox Channel, is extremely perilous.
Here Captain Lyon, in the _Griper_, was thrown anchorless upon the mercy
of a stormy sea, ice crashing around him.  One island in Fox Channel is
called Mill Island, from the incessant grinding of great masses of ice
collected there.  In the northern part of Fox Channel, on the western
shore, is Melville Peninsula, where Parry wintered on his second voyage.
Here let us go ashore and see a little colony of Esquimaux.

Their limits are built of blocks of snow, and arched, having an ice pane
for a window.  They construct their arched entrance and their
hemispherical roof on the true principles of architecture.  Those wise
men, the Egyptians, made their arch by hewing the stones out of shape;
the Esquimaux have the true secret.  Here they are, with little food in
winter and great appetites; devouring a whole walrus when they get it,
and taking the chance of hunger for the next eight days--hungry or full,
for ever happy in their lot--here are the Esquimaux.  They are warmly
clothed, each in a double suit of skins sewn neatly together.  Some are
singing, with good voices too.  Please them, and they straightway dance;
activity is good in a cold climate: Play to them on the flute, or if you
can sing well, sing, or turn a barrel-organ, they are mute, eager with
wonder and delight; their love of music is intense.  Give them a pencil,
and, like children, they will draw.  Teach them and they will learn,
oblige them and they will be grateful.  "Gentle and loving savages," one
of our old worthies called them, and the Portuguese were so much
impressed with their teachable and gentle conduct, that a Venetian
ambassador writes, "His serene majesty contemplates deriving great
advantage from the country, not only on account of the timber of which he
has occasion, but of the inhabitants, who are admirably calculated for
labour, and are the best I have ever seen."  The Esquimaux, of course,
will learn vice, and in the region visited by whale ships, vice enough
has certainly been taught him.  Here are the dogs, who will eat old
coats, or anything; and, near the dwellings, here is a
snow-bunting--robin redbreast of the Arctic lands.  A party of our
sailors once, on landing, took some sticks from a large heap, and
uncovered the nest of a snow-bunting with young, the bird flew to a
little distance, but seeing that the men sat down, and harmed her not,
continued to seek food and supply her little ones, with full faith in the
good intentions of the party.  Captain Lyon found a child's grave partly
uncovered, and a snow-bunting had built its nest upon the infant's bosom.

Sailing round Melville Peninsula, we come into the Gulf of Akkolee,
through Fury and Hecla Straits, discovered by Parry.  So we get back to
the bottom of Regent's Inlet, which we quitted a short time ago, and
sailing in the neighbourhood of the magnetic pole, we reach the estuary
of Back's River, on the north-east coast of America.  We pass then
through a strait, discovered in 1839 by Dean and Simpson, still coasting
along the northern shore of America, on the great Stinking Lake, as
Indians call this ocean.  Boats, ice permitting, and our "Phantom Ship,"
of course, can coast all the way to Behring Strait.  The whole coast has
been explored by Sir John Franklin, Sir John Richardson, and Sir George
Back, who have earned their knighthoods through great peril.  As we pass
Coronation Gulf--the scene of Franklin, Richardson, and Back's first
exploration from the Coppermine River--we revert to the romantic story of
their journey back, over a land of snow and frost, subsisting upon
lichens, with companions starved to death, where they plucked wild leaves
for tea, and ate their shoes for supper; the tragedy by the river; the
murder of poor Hood, with a book of prayers in his hand; Franklin at Fort
Enterprise, with two companions at the point of death, himself gaunt,
hollow-eyed, feeding on pounded bones, raked from the dunghill; the
arrival of Dr. Richardson and the brave sailor; their awful story of the
cannibal Michel;--we revert to these things with a shudder.  But we must
continue on our route.  The current still flows westward, bearing now
large quantities of driftwood out of the Mackenzie River.  At the name of
Sir Alexander Mackenzie, also, we might pause, and talk over the bold
achievements of another Arctic hero; but we pass on, by a rugged and
inhospitable coast, unfit for vessels of large draught--pass the broad
mouth of the Youcon, pass Point Barrow, Icy Cape, and are in Behring
Strait.  Had we passed on, we should have found the Russian Arctic coast
line, traced out by a series of Russian explorers; of whom the most
illustrious--Baron Von Wrangell--states, that beyond a certain distance
to the northward there is always found what he calls the _Polynja_ (open
water).  This is the fact adduced by those who adhere to the old fancy
that there is a sea about the Pole itself quite free from ice.

We pass through Behring Straits.  Behring, a Dane by birth, but in the
Russian service, died here in 1741, upon the scene of his discovery.  He
and his crew, victims of scurvy, were unable to manage their vessel in a
storm; and it was at length wrecked on a barren island, there, where
"want, nakedness, cold, sickness, impatience, and despair, were their
daily guests," Behring, his lieutenant, and the master died.

Now we must put a girdle round the world, and do it with the speed of
Ariel.  Here we are already in the heats of the equator.  We can do no
more than remark, that if air and water are heated at the equator, and
frozen at the poles, there will be equilibrium destroyed, and constant
currents caused.  And so it happens, so we get the prevailing winds, and
all the currents of the ocean.  Of these, some of the uses, but by no
means all, are obvious.  We urge our "Phantom" fleetly to the southern
pole.  Here, over the other hemisphere of the earth, there shines another
hemisphere of heaven.  The stars are changed; the southern cross, the
Magellanic clouds, the "coal-sack" in the milky way, attract our notice.
Now we are in the southern latitude that corresponds to England in the
north; nay, at a greater distance from the Pole, we find Kerguelen's
Land, emphatically called "The Isle of Desolation."  Icebergs float much
further into the warm sea on this side of the equator before they
dissolve.  The South Pole is evidently a more thorough refrigerator than
the North.  Why is this?  We shall soon see.  We push through pack-ice,
and through floes and fields, by lofty bergs, by an island or two covered
with penguins, until there lies before us a long range of mountains, nine
or ten thousand feet in height, and all clad in eternal snow.  That is a
portion of the Southern Continent.  Lieutenant Wilkes, in the American
exploring expedition, first discovered this, and mapped out some part of
the coast, putting a few clouds in likewise--a mistake easily made by
those who omit to verify every foot of land.  Sir James Ross, in his most
successful South Pole Expedition, during the years 1839-43, sailed over
some of this land, and confirmed the rest.  The Antarctic, as well as the
Arctic honours he secured for England, by turning a corner of the land,
and sailing far southward, along an impenetrable icy barrier, to the
latitude of seventy-eight degrees, nine minutes.  It is an elevated
continent, with many lofty ranges.  On the extreme southern point reached
by the ships, a magnificent volcano was seen spouting fire and smoke out
of the everlasting snow.  This volcano, twelve thousand four hundred feet
high, was named Mount Erebus; for the _Erebus_ and _Terror_ long sought
anxiously among the bays, and sounds, and creeks of the North Pole, then
coasted by the solid ice walls of the south.

                                                                     H. M.




A DISCOURSE WRITTEN BY SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT, KNIGHT.


_To prove a Passage by the North-West to Cathay and the East Indies_.



CHAPTER I.
TO PROVE BY AUTHORITY A PASSAGE TO BE ON THE NORTH SIDE OF AMERICA, TO GO
TO CATHAY AND THE EAST INDIES.


When I gave myself to the study of geography, after I had perused and
diligently scanned the descriptions of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and
conferred them with the maps and globes both antique and modern, I came
in fine to the fourth part of the world, commonly called America, which
by all descriptions I found to be an island environed round about with
the sea, having on the south side of it the Strait of Magellan, on the
west side the Mare de Sur, which sea runneth towards the north,
separating it from the east parts of Asia, where the dominions of the
Cathaians are.  On the east part our west ocean, and on the north side
the sea that severeth it from Greenland, through which northern seas the
passage lieth, which I take now in hand to discover.

Plato in his _Timaeus_ and in the dialogue called _Critias_, discourses
of an incomparable great island then called Atlantis, being greater than
all Africa and Asia, which lay westward from the Straits of Gibraltar,
navigable round about: affirming, also, that the princes of Atlantis did
as well enjoy the governance of all Africa and the most part of Europe as
of Atlantis itself.

Also to prove Plato's opinion of this island, and the inhabiting of it in
ancient time by them of Europe, to be of the more credit: Marinaeus
Siculus, in his Chronicle of Spain, reporteth that there hath been found
by the Spaniards in the gold mines of America certain pieces of money,
engraved with the image of Augustus Caesar; which pieces were sent to the
Pope for a testimony of the matter by John Rufus, Archbishop of
Constantinum.

Moreover, this was not only thought of Plato, but by Marsilius Ficinus,
an excellent Florentine philosopher, Crantor the Grecian, Proclus, also
Philo the famous Jew (as appeareth in his book _De Mundo_, and in the
Commentaries upon Plato), to be overflown, and swallowed up with water,
by reason of a mighty earthquake and streaming down of the heavenly flood
gates.  The like thereof happened unto some part of Italy, when by the
forcibleness of the sea, called Superum, it cut off Sicily from the
continent of Calabria, as appeareth in Justin in the beginning of his
fourth book.  Also there chanced the like in Zeeland, a part of Flanders.

And also the cities of Pyrrha and Antissa, about Palus Meotis; and also
the city Burys, in the Corinthian Gulf, commonly called Sinus
Corinthiacus, have been swallowed up with the sea, and are not at this
day to be discerned: by which accident America grew to be unknown, of
long time, unto us of the later ages, and was lately discovered again by
Americus Vespucius, in the year of our Lord 1497, which some say to have
been first discovered by Christopher Columbus, a Genoese, Anno 1492.

The same calamity happened unto this isle of Atlantis six hundred and odd
years before Plato's time, which some of the people of the south-east
parts of the world accounted as nine thousand years; for the manner then
was to reckon the moon's period of the Zodiac for a year, which is our
usual month, depending a Luminari minore.

So that in these our days there can no other main or island be found or
judged to be parcel of this Atlantis than those western islands, which
now bear the name of America; countervailing thereby the name of Atlantis
in the knowledge of our age.

Then, if when no part of the said Atlantis was oppressed by water and
earthquake, the coasts round about the same were navigable, a far greater
hope now remaineth of the same by the north-west, seeing the most part of
it was since that time swallowed up with water, which could not utterly
take away the old deeps and channels, but, rather, be many occasion of
the enlarging of the old, and also an enforcing of a great many new; why
then should we now doubt of our North-West Passage and navigation from
England to India, etc., seeing that Atlantis, now called America, was
ever known to be an island, and in those days navigable round about,
which by access of more water could not be diminished?

Also Aristotle in his book _De Mundo_, and the learned German, Simon
Gryneus, in his annotations upon the same, saith that the whole earth
(meaning thereby, as manifestly doth appear, Asia, Africa, and Europe,
being all the countries then known) to be but one island, compassed about
with the reach of the Atlantic sea; which likewise approveth America to
be an island, and in no part adjoining to Asia or the rest.

Also many ancient writers, as Strabo and others, called both the ocean
sea (which lieth east of India) Atlanticum Pelagus, and that sea also on
the west coasts of Spain and Africa, Mare Atlanticum; the distance
between the two coasts is almost half the compass of the earth.

So that it is incredible, as by Plato appeareth manifestly, that the East
Indian Sea had the name of Atlanticum Pelagus, of the mountain Atlas in
Africa, or yet the sea adjoining to Africa had name Oceanus Atlanticus,
of the same mountain; but that those seas and the mountain Atlas were so
called of this great island Atlantis, and that the one and the other had
their names for a memorial of the mighty Prince Atlas, sometime king
thereof, who was Japhet, youngest son to Noah, in whose time the whole
earth was divided between the three brethren, Shem, Ham, and Japhet.

Wherefore I am of opinion that America by the north-west will be found
favourable to this our enterprise, and am the rather emboldened to
believe the same, for that I find it not only confirmed by Plato,
Aristotle, and other ancient philosophers, but also by the best modern
geographers, as Gemma Frisius, Munsterus, Appianus Hunterus, Gastaldus,
Guyccardinus, Michael Tramesinus, Franciscus Demongenitus, Barnardus,
Puteanus, Andreas Vavasor, Tramontanus, Petrus Martyr, and also Ortelius,
who doth coast out in his general map (set out Anno 1569) all the
countries and capes on the north-west side of America from Hochelega to
Cape de Paramantia, describing likewise the sea-coasts of Cathay and
Greenland, towards any part of America, making both Greenland and America
islands disjoined by a great sea from any part of Asia.

All which learned men and painful travellers have affirmed with one
consent and voice, that America was an island, and that there lieth a
great sea between it, Cathay, and Greenland, by the which any man of our
country that will give the attempt, may with small danger pass to Cathay,
the Moluccas, India, and all other places in the east in much shorter
time than either the Spaniard or Portuguese doth, or may do, from the
nearest part of any of their countries within Europe.

What moved these learned men to affirm thus much I know not, or to what
end so many and sundry travellers of both ages have allowed the same; but
I conjecture that they would never have so constantly affirmed, or
notified their opinions therein to the world, if they had not had great
good cause, and many probable reasons to have led them thereunto.

Now lest you should make small account of ancient writers or of their
experiences which travelled long before our times, reckoning their
authority amongst fables of no importance, I have for the better
assurance of those proofs set down some part of a discourse, written in
the Saxon tongue, and translated into English by Master Noel, servant to
Master Secretary Cecil, wherein there is described a navigation which one
other made, in the time of King Alfred, King of Wessex, Anne 871, the
words of which discourse were these: "He sailed right north, having
always the desert land on the starboard, and on the larboard the main
sea, continuing his course, until he perceived that the coast bowed
directly towards the east or else the sea opened into the land he could
not tell how far, where he was compelled to stay until he had a western
wind or somewhat upon the north, and sailed thence directly east along
the coast, so far as he was able in four days, where he was again
enforced to tarry until he had a north wind, because the coast there
bowed directly towards the south, or at least opened he knew not how far
into the land, so that he sailed thence along the coast continually full
south, so far as he could travel in the space of five days, where he
discovered a mighty river which opened far into the land, and in the
entry of this river he turned back again."

Whereby it appeareth that he went the very way that we now do yearly
trade by S. Nicholas into Muscovia, which way no man in our age knew for
certainty to be sea, until it was since discovered by our Englishmen in
the time of King Edward I., but thought before that time that Greenland
had joined to Normoria Byarmia, and therefore was accounted a new
discovery, being nothing so indeed, as by this discourse of Ochther's it
appeareth.

Nevertheless if any man should have taken this voyage in hand by the
encouragement of this only author, he should have been thought but
simple, considering that this navigation was written so many years past,
in so barbarous a tongue by one only obscure author, and yet we in these
our days find by our own experiences his former reports to be true.

How much more, then, ought we to believe this passage to Cathay to be,
being verified by the opinions of all the best, both antique and modern
geographers, and plainly set out in the best and most allowed maps,
charts, globes, cosmographical tables, and discourses of this our age and
by the rest not denied, but left as a matter doubtful.



CHAPTER II.


1.  All seas are maintained by the abundance of water, so that the nearer
the end any river, bay, or haven is, the shallower it waxeth (although by
some accidental bar it is sometime found otherwise), but the farther you
sail west from Iceland, towards the place where this strait is thought to
be, the more deep are the seas, which giveth us good hope of continuance
of the same sea, with Mare del Sur, by some strait that lieth between
America, Greenland, and Cathay.

2.  Also, if that America were not an island, but a part of the continent
adjoining to Asia, either the people which inhabit Mangia, Anian, and
Quinzay, etc., being borderers upon it, would before this time have made
some road into it, hoping to have found some like commodities to their
own.

3.  Or else the Syrians and Tartars (which oftentimes heretofore have
sought far and near for new seats, driven thereunto through the necessity
of their cold and miserable countries) would in all this time have found
the way to America and entered the same had the passages been never so
strait or difficult, the country being so temperate, pleasant, and
fruitful in comparison of their own.  But there was never any such people
found there by any of the Spaniards, Portuguese, or Frenchmen, who first
discovered the inland of that country, which Spaniards or Frenchmen must
then of necessity have seen some one civilised man in America,
considering how full of civilised people Asia is; but they never saw so
much as one token or sign that ever any man of the known part of the
world had been there.

4.  Furthermore, it is to be thought, that if by reason of mountains or
other craggy places the people neither of Cathay or Tartary could enter
the country of America, or they of America have entered Asia if it were
so joined, yet some one savage or wandering-beast would in so many years
have passed into it; but there hath not any time been found any of the
beasts proper to Cathay or Tartary, etc., in America; nor of those proper
to America in Tartary, Cathay, etc., or in any part of Asia, which thing
proveth America not only to be one island, and in no part adjoining to
Asia, but also that the people of those countries have not had any
traffic with each other.

5.  Moreover at the least some one of those painful travellers which of
purpose have passed the confines of both countries, with intent only to
discover, would, as it is most likely, have gone from the one to the
other, if there had been any piece of land, or isthmus, to have joined
them together, or else have declared some cause to the contrary.

6.  But neither Paulus Venetus, who lived and dwelt a long time in
Cathay, ever came into America, and yet was at the sea coasts of Mangia
over against it, where he was embarked and performed a great navigation
along those seas; neither yet Veratzanus or Franciscus Vasquez de
Coronado, who travelled the north part of America by land, ever found
entry from thence by land to Cathay, or any part of Asia.

7.  Also it appeareth to be an island, insomuch as the sea runneth by
nature circularly from the east to the west, following the diurnal motion
of the _Primum Mobile_, and carrieth with it all inferior bodies movable,
as well celestial as elemental; which motion of the waters is most
evidently seen in the sea, which lieth on the south side of Africa, where
the current that runneth from the east to the west is so strong (by
reason of such motion) that the Portuguese in their voyages eastward to
Calicut, in passing by the Cape of Good Hope, are enforced to make divers
courses, the current there being so swift, as it striketh from thence,
all along westward, upon the straits of Magellan, being distant from
thence near the fourth part of the longitude of the earth: and not having
free passage and entrance through that frith towards the west, by reason
of the narrowness of the said strait of Magellan, it runneth to salve
this wrong (Nature not yielding to accidental restraints) all along the
eastern coasts of America northwards so far as Cape Frido, being the
farthest known place of the same continent towards the north, which is
about four thousand eight-hundred leagues, reckoning therewithal the
trending of the land.

8.  So that this current, being continually maintained with such force as
Jacques Cartier affirmeth it to be, who met with the same, being at
Baccalaos as he sailed along the coasts of America, then, either it must
of necessity have way to pass from Cape Frido through this frith,
westward towards Cathay, being known to come so far only to salve his
former wrongs by the authority before named; or else it must needs strike
over upon the coast of Iceland, Lapland, Finmark, and Norway (which are
east from the said place about three hundred and sixty leagues) with
greater force than it did from the Cape of Good Hope upon the strait of
Magellan, or from the strait of Magellan to Cape Frido; upon which coasts
Jacques Cartier met with the same, considering the shortness of the cut
from the said Cape Frido to Iceland, Lapland, etc.  And so the cause
efficient remaining, it would have continually followed along our coasts
through the narrow seas, which it doeth not, but is digested about the
north of Labrador by some through passage there through this frith.

The like course of the water, in some respect, happeneth in the
Mediterranean Sea (as affirmeth Contorenus), where, as the current which
cometh from Tanais and the Euxine, running along all the coasts of
Greece, Italy, France, and Spain, and not finding sufficient way out
through Gibraltar by means of the straitness of the frith, it runneth
back again along the coasts of Barbary by Alexandria, Natolia, etc.

It may, peradventure, be thought that this course of the sea doth
sometime surcease and thereby impugn this principle, because it is not
discerned all along the coast of America in such sort as Jacques Cartier
found it, whereunto I answer this: That albeit in every part of the coast
of America or elsewhere this current is not sensibly perceived, yet it
hath evermore such like motion, either the uppermost or nethermost part
of the sea; as it may be proved true, if you sink a sail by a couple of
ropes near the ground, fastening to the nethermost corners two gun
chambers or other weights, by the driving whereof you shall plainly
perceive the course of the water and current running with such like
course in the bottom.  By the like experiment you may find the ordinary
motion of the sea in the ocean, how far soever you be off the land.

9.  Also, there cometh another current from out the north-east from the
Scythian Sea (as Master Jenkinson, a man of rare virtue, great travel,
and experience, told me), which runneth westward towards Labrador, as the
other did which cometh from the south; so that both these currents must
have way through this our strait, or else encounter together and run
contrary courses in one line, but no such conflicts of streams or
contrary courses are found about any part of Labrador or Newfoundland, as
witness our yearly fishers and other sailors that way, but is there
separated as aforesaid, and found by the experience of Barnarde de la
Torre to fall into Mare del Sur.

10.  Furthermore, the current in the great ocean could not have been
maintained to run continually one way from the beginning of the world
unto this day, had there not been some through passage by the strait
aforesaid, and so by circular motion be brought again to maintain itself,
for the tides and courses of the sea are maintained by their
interchangeable motions, as fresh rivers are by springs, by ebbing and
flowing, by rarefaction and condensation.

So that it resteth not possible (so far as my simple reason can
comprehend) that this perpetual current can by any means be maintained,
but only by a continual reaccess of the same water, which passeth through
the strait, and is brought about thither again by such circular motion as
aforesaid, and the certain falling thereof by this strait into Mare del
Sur is proved by the testimony and experience of Barnarde de la Torre,
who was sent from P. de la Natividad to the Moluccas, 1542, by
commandment of Anthony Mendoza, then Viceroy of Nova Hispania, which
Barnarde sailed 750 leagues on the north side of the Equator, and there
met with a current which came from the north-east, the which drove him
back again to Tidore.

Wherefore this current being proved to come from the Cape of Good Hope to
the strait of Magellan, and wanting sufficient entrance there, is by the
necessity of Nature's force brought to Terra de Labrador, where Jacques
Cartier met the same, and thence certainly known not to strike over upon
Iceland, Lapland, etc., and found by Barnarde de la Torre, in Mare del
Sur, on the backside of America, therefore this current, having none
other passage, must of necessity fall out through this strait into Mare
del Sur, and so trending by the Moluccas, China, and the Cape of Good
Hope, maintaineth itself by circular motion, which is all one in Nature
with motus ab oriente in occidentem.

So that it seemeth we have now more occasion to doubt of our return than
whether there be a passage that way, yea or no: which doubt hereafter
shall be sufficiently removed; wherefore, in my opinion reason itself
grounded upon experience assureth us of this passage if there were
nothing else to put us in hope thereof.  But lest these might not
suffice, I have added in this chapter following some further proof
thereof, by the experience of such as have passed some part of this
discovery, and in the next adjoining to that the authority of those which
have sailed wholly through every part thereof.



CHAPTER III.
TO PROVE BY EXPERIENCE OF SUNDRY MEN'S TRAVELS THE OPENING OF SOME PART
OF THIS NORTH-WEST PASSAGE, WHEREBY GOOD HOPE REMAINETH OF THE REST.


1.  Paulus Venetus, who dwelt many years in Cathay, affirmed that he had
sailed 1,500 miles upon the coast of Mangia and Anian, towards the
north-east, always finding the seas open before him, not only as far as
he went, but also as far as he could discern.

2.  Also Franciscus Vasquez de Coronado, passing from Mexico by Cevola,
through the country of Quiver to Sierra Nevada, found there a great sea,
where were certain ships laden with merchandise, the mariners wearing on
their heads the pictures of certain birds called Alcatrarzi, part whereof
were made of gold and part of silver; who signified by signs that they
were thirty days coming thither, which likewise proveth America by
experience to be disjoined from Cathay, on that part, by a great sea,
because they could not come from any part of America as natives thereof;
for that, so far as is discovered, there hath not been found there any
one ship of that country.

3.  In like manner, Johann Baros testifieth that the cosmographers of
China (where he himself had been) affirm that the sea coast trendeth from
thence north-east to fifty degrees of septentrional latitude, being the
farthest part that way, which the Portuguese had then knowledge of; and
that the said cosmographers knew no cause to the contrary, but that it
might continue farther.

By whose experiences America is proved to be separate from those parts of
Asia, directly against the same.  And not contented with the judgments of
these learned men only, I have searched what might be further said for
the confirmation hereof.

4.  And I found that Franciscus Lopez de Gomara affirmeth America to be
an island, and likewise Greenland; and that Greenland is distant from
Lapland forty leagues, and from Terra de Labrador fifty.

5.  Moreover Alvarez Nunmius, a Spaniard, and learned cosmographer, and
Jacques Cartier, who made two voyages into those parts, and sailed five
hundred miles upon the north-east coasts of America.

6.  Likewise Hieronimus Fracastorius, a learned Italian, and traveller in
the north parts of the same land.

7.  Also Jacques Cartier, having done the like, heard say at Hochelaga,
in Nova Francia, how that there was a great sea at Saguinay, whereof the
end was not known: which they presupposed to be the passage to Cathay.
Furthermore, Sebastian Cabot, by his personal experience and travel, has
set forth and described this passage in his charts which are yet to be
seen in the Queen's Majesty's Privy Gallery at Whitehall, who was sent to
make this discovery by King Henry VII. and entered the same straits,
affirming that he sailed very far westward with a quarter of the north,
on the north side of Terra de Labrador, the 11th of June, until he came
to the septentrional latitude of sixty-seven and a half degrees, and
finding the seas still open, said, that he might and would have gone to
Cathay if the mutiny of the master and mariners had not been.

Now, as these men's experience have proved some part of this passage, so
the chapter following shall put you in full assurance of the rest by
their experiences which have passed through every part thereof.



CHAPTER IV.
TO PROVE BY CIRCUMSTANCE THAT THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE HATH BEEN SAILED
THROUGHOUT.


The diversity between brute beasts and men, or between the wise and the
simple, is, that the one judgeth by sense only, and gathereth no surety
of anything that he hath not seen, felt, heard, tasted, or smelled: and
the other not so only, but also findeth the certainty of things, by
reason, before they happen to be tried, wherefore I have added proofs of
both sorts, that the one and the other might thereby be satisfied.

1.  First, as Gemma Frisius reciteth, there went from Europe three
brethren though this passage: whereof it took the name of Fretum trium
fratrum.

2.  Also Pliny affirmeth out of Cornelius Nepos (who wrote fifty-seven
years before Christ) that there were certain Indians driven by tempest
upon the coast of Germany which were presented by the King of Suevia unto
Quintus Metellus Celer, then Pro-Consul of France.

3.  And Pliny upon the same saith that it is no marvel, though there be
sea by the north, where there is such abundance of moisture; which
argueth, that he doubted not of a navigable passage that way, through
which those Indians came.

4.  And for the better proof that the same authority of Cornelius Nepos
is not by me wrested to prove my opinion of the North-West Passage, you
shall find the same affirmed more plainly in that behalf by the excellent
geographer Dominicus Marius Niger, who showeth how many ways the Indian
sea stretcheth itself, making in that place recital of certain Indians
that were likewise driven through the north seas from India, upon the
coasts of Germany, by great tempest, as they were sailing in trade of
merchandise.

5.  Also, whiles Frederick Barbarossa reigned Emperor, A.D. 1160, there
came certain other Indians upon the coast of Germany.

6.  Likewise Othon, in the story of the Goths, affirmeth that in the time
of the German Emperors there were also certain Indians cast by force of
weather upon the coast of the said country, which foresaid Indians could
not possibly have come by the south-east, south-west, nor from any part
of Africa or America, nor yet by the north-east: therefore they came of
necessity by this our North-West Passage.



CHAPTER V.
TO PROVE THAT THESE INDIANS, AFORENAMED, CAME NOT BY THE SOUTH-EAST,
SOUTH-WEST, NOR FROM ANY OTHER PART OF AFRICA OR AMERICA.


1.  They could not come from the south-east by the Cape of Good Hope,
because the roughness of the seas there is such--occasioned by the
currents and great winds in that part--that the greatest armadas the King
of Portugal hath cannot without great difficulty pass that way, much
less, then, a canoe of India could live in those outrageous seas without
shipwreck, being a vessel but of very small burden, and the Indians have
conducted themselves to the place aforesaid, being men unexpert in the
art of navigation.

2.  Also, it appeareth plainly that they were not able to come from along
the coast of Africa aforesaid to those parts of Europe, because the winds
do, for the most part, blow there easterly or from the shore, and the
current running that way in like sort, would have driven them westward
upon some part of America, for such winds and tides could never have led
them from thence to the said place where they were found, nor yet could
they have come from any of the countries aforesaid, keeping the seas
always, without skilful mariners to have conducted them such like courses
as were necessary to perform such a voyage.

3.  Presupposing also, if they had been driven to the west, as they must
have been, coming that way, then they should have perished, wanting
supply of victuals, not having any place--once leaving the coast of
Africa--until they came to America, north of America, until they arrived
upon some part of Europe or the islands adjoining to it to have refreshed
themselves.

4.  Also, if, notwithstanding such impossibilities, they might have
recovered Germany by coming from India by the south-east, yet must they
without all doubt have struck upon some other part of Europe before their
arrival there, as the isles of Madeira, Portugal, Spain, France, England,
Ireland, etc., which, if they had done, it is not credible that they
should or would have departed undiscovered of the inhabitants; but there
was never found in those days any such ship or men, but only upon the
coasts of Germany, where they have been sundry times and in sundry ages
cast ashore; neither is it like that they would have committed themselves
again to sea, if they had so arrived, not knowing where they were, nor
whither to have gone.

5.  And by the south-west it is impossible, because the current
aforesaid, which cometh from the east, striketh with such force upon the
Straits of Magellan, and falleth with such swiftness and fury into Mare
de Sur, that hardly any ship--but not possibly a canoe, with such
unskilful mariners--can come into our western ocean through that strait
from the west seas of America, as Magellan's experience hath partly
taught us.

6.  And further, to prove that these people so arriving upon the coast of
Germany were Indians, and not inhabiters of any part either of Africa or
America, it is manifest, because the natives, both of Africa and America,
neither had, or have at this day, as is reported, other kind of boats
than such as do bear neither masts nor sails, except only upon the coasts
of Barbary and the Turks' ships, but do carry themselves from place to
place near the shore by the oar only.



CHAPTER VI.
TO PROVE THAT THOSE INDIANS CAME NOT BY THE NORTH-EAST, AND THAT THERE IS
NO THROUGH NAVIGABLE PASSAGE THAT WAY.


1.  It is likely that there should be no through passage by the
north-east whereby to go round about the world, because all seas, as
aforesaid, are maintained by the abundance of water, waxing more shallow
and shelving towards the end, as we find it doth, by experience, in the
Frozen Sea, towards the east, which breedeth small hope of any great
continuance of that sea to be navigable towards the east, sufficient to
sail thereby round about the world.

2.  Also, it standeth scarcely with reason that the Indians dwelling
under the Torrid Zone could endure the injury of the cold air, about the
northern latitude of 80 degrees, under which elevation the passage by the
north-east cannot be, as the often experiences had of all the south part
of it showeth, seeing that some of the inhabitants of this cold climate,
whose summer is to them an extreme winter, have been stricken to death
with the cold damps of the air, about 72 degrees, by an accidental
mishap, and yet the air in such like elevation is always cold, and too
cold for such as the Indians are.

3.  Furthermore, the piercing cold of the gross thick air so near the
Pole will so stiffen the sails and ship tackling, that no mariner can
either hoist or strike them--as our experience, far nearer the south than
this passage is presupposed to be, hath taught us--without the use
whereof no voyage can be performed.

4.  Also, the air is so darkened with continual mists and fogs so near
the Pole, that no man can well see either to guide his ship or to direct
his course.

5.  Also the compass at such elevation doth very suddenly vary, which
things must of force have been their destruction, although they had been
men of much more skill than the Indians are.

6.  Moreover, all bays, gulfs, and rivers do receive their increase upon
the flood, sensibly to be discerned on the one side of the shore or the
other, as many ways as they be open to any main sea, as the
Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, Sinus Bodicus, the Thames,
and all other known havens or rivers in any part of the world, and each
of them opening but on one part to the main sea, do likewise receive
their increase upon the flood the same way, and none other, which the
Frozen Sea doth, only by the west, as Master Jenkinson affirmed unto me,
and therefore it followeth that this north-east sea, receiving increase
only from the west, cannot possibly open to the main ocean by the east.

7.  Moreover, the farther you pass into any sea towards the end of it, of
that part which is shut up from the main sea, as in all those
above-mentioned, the less and less the tides rise and fall.  The like
whereof also happeneth in the Frozen Sea, which proveth but small
continuance of that sea toward the east.

8.  Also, the farther ye go towards the east in the Frozen Sea the less
soft the water is, which could not happen if it were open to the salt sea
towards the east, as it is to the west only, seeing everything naturally
engendereth his like, and then must it be like salt throughout, as all
the seas are in such like climate and elevation.  And therefore it
seemeth that this north-east sea is maintained by the river Ob, and such
like freshets as the Pontic Sea and Mediterranean Sea, in the uppermost
parts thereof by the river Nile, the Danube, Dnieper, Tanais, etc.

9.  Furthermore, if there were any such sea at that elevation, of like it
should be always frozen throughout--there being no tides to hinder
it--because the extreme coldness of the air in the uppermost part, and
the extreme coldness of the earth in the bottom, the sea there being but
of small depth, whereby the one accidental coldness doth meet with the
other; and the sun, not having his reflection so near the Pole, but at
very blunt angles, it can never be dissolved after it is frozen,
notwithstanding the great length of their day: for that the sun hath no
heat at all in his light or beams, but proceeding only by an accidental
reflection which there wanteth in effect.

10.  And yet if the sun were of sufficient force in that elevation to
prevail against this ice, yet must it be broken before it can be
dissolved, which cannot be but through the long continue of the sun above
their horizon, and by that time the summer would be so far spent, and so
great darkness and cold ensue, that no man could be able to endure so
cold, dark, and discomfortable a navigation, if it were possible for him
then and there to live.

11.  Further, the ice being once broken, it must of force so drive with
the winds and tides that no ship can sail in those seas, seeing our
fishers of Iceland and Newfoundland are subject to danger through the
great islands of ice which fleet in the seas, far to the south of that
presupposed passage.

12.  And it cannot be that this North-East Passage should be any nearer
the south than before recited, for then it should cut off Ciremissi and
Turbi, Tartarii, with Vzesucani, Chisani, and others from the continent
of Asia, which are known to be adjoining to Scythia, Tartary, etc., with
the other part of the same continent.

And if there were any through passage by the north-east, yet were it to
small end and purpose for our traffic, because no ship of great burden
can navigate in so shallow a sea, and ships of small burden are very
unfit and unprofitable, especially towards the blustering north, to
perform such a voyage.



CHAPTER VII.
TO PROVE THAT THE INDIANS AFORENAMED CAME ONLY BY THE NORTH-WEST, WHICH
INDUCETH A CERTAINTY OF OUR PASSAGE BY EXPERIENCE.


It is as likely that they came by the north-west as it is unlikely that
they should come either by the south-east, south-west, north-east, or
from any other part of Africa or America, and therefore this North-West
Passage, having been already so many ways proved by disproving of the
others, etc., I shall the less need in this place to use many words
otherwise than to conclude in this sort, that they came only by the
north-west from England, having these many reasons to lead me thereunto.

1.  First, the one-half of the winds of the compass might bring them by
the north-west, veering always between two sheets, with which kind of
sailing the Indians are only acquainted, not having any use of a bow line
or quarter wind, without the which no ship can possibly come, either by
the south-east, south-west, or north-east, having so many sundry capes to
double, whereunto are required such change and shifts of winds.

2.  And it seemeth likely that they should come by the north-west,
because the coast whereon they were driven lay east from this our
passage, and all winds do naturally drive a ship to an opposite point
from whence it bloweth, not being otherwise guided by art, which the
Indians do utterly want, and therefore it seemeth that they came directly
through this, our strait, which they might do with one wind.

3.  For if they had come by the Cape of Good Hope, then must they, as
aforesaid, have fallen upon the south parts of America.

4.  And if by the Strait of Magellan, then upon the coasts of Africa,
Spain, Portugal, France, Ireland, or England.

5.  And if by the north-east, then upon the coasts of Ciremissi,
Tartarii, Lapland, Iceland, Labrador, etc., and upon these coasts, as
aforesaid, they have never been found.

So that by all likelihood they could never have come without shipwreck
upon the coasts of Germany, if they had first struck upon the coasts of
so many countries, wanting both art and shipping to make orderly
discovery, and altogether ignorant both of the art of navigation and also
of the rocks, flats, sands, or havens of those parts of the world, which
in most of these places are plentiful.

6.  And further, it seemeth very likely that the inhabitants of the most
part of those countries, by which they must have come any other way
besides by the north-west, being for the most part anthropophagi, or
men-eaters, would have devoured them, slain them, or, at the leastwise,
kept them as wonders for the gaze.

So that it plainly appeareth that those Indians--which, as you have
heard, in sundry ages were driven by tempest upon the shore of
Germany--came only through our North-West Passage.

7.  Moreover, the passage is certainly proved by a navigation that a
Portuguese made, who passed through this strait, giving name to a
promontory far within the same, calling it after his own name,
Promontorium Corterialis, near adjoining unto Polisacus Fluvius.

8.  Also one Scolmus, a Dane, entered and passed a great part thereof.

9.  Also there was one Salva Terra, a gentleman of Victoria in Spain,
that came by chance out of the West Indies into Ireland, Anno 1568, who
affirmed the North-West Passage from us to Cathay, constantly to be
believed in America navigable; and further said, in the presence of Sir
Henry Sidney, then Lord Deputy of Ireland, in my hearing, that a friar of
Mexico, called Andre Urdaneta, more than eight years before his then
coming into Ireland, told him there that he came from Mare del Sur into
Germany through this North-West Passage, and showed Salva Terra--at that
time being then with him in Mexico--a sea-card made by his own experience
and travel in that voyage, wherein was plainly set down and described
this North-West Passage, agreeing in all points with Ortelius' map.

And further this friar told the King of Portugal (as he returned by that
country homeward) that there was of certainty such a passage north-west
from England, and that he meant to publish the same; which done, the king
most earnestly desired him not in any wise to disclose or make the
passage known to any nation.  For that (said the king) _if England had
knowledge and experience thereof_, _it would greatly hinder both the King
of Spain and me_.  This friar (as Salva Terra reported) was the greatest
discoverer by sea that hath been in our age.  Also Salva Terra, being
persuaded of this passage by the friar Urdaneta, and by the common
opinion of the Spaniards inhabiting America, offered most willingly to
accompany me in this discovery, which of like he would not have done if
he had stood in doubt thereof.

And now, as these modern experiences cannot be impugned, so, least it
might be objected that these things (gathered out of ancient writers,
which wrote so many years past) might serve little to prove this passage
by the north of America, because both America and India were to them then
utterly unknown; to remove this doubt, let this suffice, that Aristotle
(who was 300 years before Christ) named the Indian Sea.  Also Berosus
(who lived 330 before Christ) hath these words, _Ganges in India_.

Also in the first chapter of Esther be these words: "In the days of
Ahasuerus, which ruled from India to Ethiopia," which Ahasuerus lived 580
years before Christ.  Also Quintus Curtius, where he speaketh of the
Conquest of Alexander, mentioneth India.  Also Arianus Philostratus, and
Sidrach, in his discourses of the wars of the King of Bactria, and of
Garaab, who had the most part of India under his government.  All which
assumeth us that both India and Indians were known in those days.

These things considered, we may, in my opinion, not only assure ourselves
of this passage by the north-west, but also that it is navigable both to
come and go, as hath been proved in part and in all by the experience of
divers as Sebastian Cabot, Corterialis, the three brethren above named,
the Indians, and Urdaneta, the friar of Mexico, etc.

And yet, notwithstanding all which, there be some that have a better hope
of this passage to Cathay by the north-east than by the west, whose
reasons, with my several answers, ensue in the chapter following.



CHAPTER VIII.
CERTAIN REASONS ALLEGED FOR THE PROVING OF A PASSAGE BY THE NORTH-EAST
BEFORE THE QUEEN'S MAJESTY, AND CERTAIN LORDS OF THE COUNCIL, BY MASTER
ANTHONY JENKINSON, WITH MY SEVERAL ANSWERS THEN USED TO THE SAME.


Because you may understand as well those things alleged against me as
what doth serve for my purpose, I have here added the reasons of Master
Anthony Jenkinson, a worthy gentleman, and a great traveller, who
conceived a better hope of the passage to Cathay from us to be by the
north-east than by the north-west.

He first said that he thought not to the contrary but that there was a
passage by the north-west, according to mime opinion, but he was assured
that there might be found a navigable passage by the north-east from
England to go to all the east parts of the world, which he endeavoured to
prove three ways.

The first was, that he heard a fisherman of Tartary say in hunting the
morse, that he sailed very far towards the south-east, finding no end of
the sea, whereby he hoped a through passage to be that way.

Whereunto I answered that the Tartars were a barbarous people, and
utterly ignorant in the art of navigation, not knowing the use of the
sea-card, compass, or star, which he confessed true; and therefore they
could not (said I) certainly know the south-east from the north-east in a
wide sea, and a place unknown from the sight of the land.

Or if he sailed anything near the shore, yet he, being ignorant, might be
deceived by the doubling of many points and capes, and by the trending of
the land, albeit he kept continually along the shore.

And further, it might be that the poor fisherman through simplicity
thought that there was nothing that way but sea, because he saw mine
land, which proof (under correction) giveth small assurance of a
navigable sea by the north-east to go round about the world, for that he
judged by the eye only, seeing we in this clear air do account twenty
miles a ken at sea.

His second reason is, that there was an unicorn's horn found upon the
coast of Tartary, which could not come (said he) thither by any other
means than with the tides, through some strait in the north-east of the
Frozen Sea, there being no unicorns in any part of Asia, saving in India
and Cathay, which reason, in my simple judgment, has as little force.

First, it is doubtful whether those barbarous Tartars do know an
unicorn's horn, yea or no; and if it were one, yet it is not credible
that the sea could have driven it so far, it being of such nature that it
cannot float.

Also the tides running to and fro would have driven it as far back with
the ebb as it brought it forward with the flood.

There is also a beast called Asinus Indicus (whose horn most like it
was), which hath but one horn like an unicorn in his forehead, whereof
there is great plenty in all the north parts thereunto adjoining, as in
Lapland, Norway, Finmark, etc., as Jocobus Zeiglerus writeth in his
history of Scondia.

And as Albertus saith, there is a fish which hath but one horn in his
forehead like to an unicorn, and therefore it seemeth very doubtful both
from whence it came, and whether it were an unicorn's horn, yea or no.

His third and last reason was, that there came a continual stream or
current through the Frozen Sea of such swiftness, as a Colmax told him,
that if you cast anything therein, it would presently be carried out of
sight towards the west.

Whereunto I answered, that there doth the like from Palus Maeotis, by the
Euxine, the Bosphorus, and along the coast of Greece, etc., as it is
affirmed by Contarenus, and divers others that have had experience of the
same; and yet that sea lieth not open to any main sea that way, but is
maintained by freshets, as by the Don, the Danube, etc.

In like manner is this current in the Frozen Sea increased and maintained
by the Dwina, the river Ob, etc.

Now as I have here briefly recited the reasons alleged to prove a passage
to Cathay by the north-east with my several answers thereunto, so will I
leave it unto your judgment, to hope or despair of either at your
pleasure.



CHAPTER IX.
HOW THAT THE PASSAGE BY THE NORTH-WEST IS MORE COMMODIOUS FOR OUR TRAFFIC
THAN THE OTHER BY THE EAST, IF THERE WERE ANY SUCH.


1.  By the north-east, if your winds do not give you a marvellous speedy
and lucky passage, you are in danger (of being so near the Pole) to be
benighted almost the one half of the year, and what danger that were, to
live so long comfortless, void of light (if the cold killed you not),
each man of reason or understanding may judge.

2.  Also Mangia, Quinzai, and the Moluccas, are nearer unto us by the
north-west than by the north-east more than two-fifths, which is almost
by the half.

3.  Also we may have by the rest a yearly return, it being at all times
navigable, whereas you have but four months in the whole year to go by
the north-east, the passage being at such elevation as it is formerly
expressed, for it cannot be any nearer the south.

4.  Furthermore, it cannot be finished without divers winterings by the
way, having no havens in any temperate climate to harbour in there, for
it is as much as we can well sail from hence to S. Nicholas, in the trade
of Muscovy, and return in the navigable season of the year, and from S.
Nicholas, Ciremissi, Tartarii, which standeth 80 degrees of the
septentrional latitude, it is at the left 400 leagues, which amounteth
scarce to the third part of the way, to the end of your voyage by the
north-east.

5.  And yet, after you have doubled this Cape, if then there might be
found a navigable sea to carry you south-east according to your desire,
yet can you not winter conveniently until you come to sixty degrees and
to take up one degree running south-east you must sail twenty-four
leagues and three four parts, which amounteth to four hundred and
ninety-five leagues.

6.  Furthermore, you may by the north-west sail thither, with all
easterly winds, and return with any westerly winds, whereas you must have
by the north-east sundry winds, and those proper, according to the lie of
the coast and capes, you shall be enforced to double, which winds are not
always to be had when they are looked for; whereby your journey should be
greatly prolonged, and hardly endured so near the Pole, as we are taught
by Sir Hugh Willoughbie, who was frozen to death far nearer the south.

7.  Moreover, it is very doubtful whether we should long enjoy that trade
by the north-east if there were any such passage that way, the
commodities thereof once known to the Muscovite, what privilege soever he
hath granted, seeing pollice with the maze of excessive gain, to the
enriching of himself and all his dominions, would persuade him to presume
the same, having so great opportunity, to distribute the commodities of
those countries by the Naruc.

But by the north-west we may safely trade without danger or annoyance of
any prince living, Christian or heathen, it being out of all their
trades.

8.  Also the Queen's Majesty's dominions are nearer the North-West
Passage than any other great princes that might pass that way, and both
in their going and return they must of necessity succour themselves and
their ships upon some part of the same if any tempestuous weather should
happen.

Further, no prince's navy of the world is able to encounter the Queen's
Majesty's navy as it is at this present; and yet it should be greatly
increased by the traffic ensuing upon this discovery, for it is the long
voyages that increase and maintain great shipping.

Now it seemeth unnecessary to declare what commodities would grow thereby
if all these things were as we have heretofore presupposed and thought
them to be; which next adjoining are briefly declared.



CHAPTER X.
WHAT COMMODITIES WOULD ENSUE, THIS PASSAGE ONCE DISCOVERED.


1.  It were the only way for our princes to possess the wealth of all the
east parts (as they term them) of the world, which is infinite; as
appeareth by the experience of Alexander the Great in the time of his
conquest of India and the east parts of the world, alleged by Quintus
Curtius, which would be a great advancement to our country, wonderful
enriching to our prince, and unspeakable commodities to all the
inhabitants of Europe.

2.  For, through the shortness of the voyage, we should be able to sell
all manner of merchandise brought from thence far better cheap than
either the Portuguese or Spaniard doth or may do.  And, further, share
with the Portuguese in the east and the Spaniard in the west by trading
to any part of America through Mare del Sur, where they can no manner of
way offend us.

3.  Also we sailed to divers marvellous rich countries, both civil and
others, out of both their jurisdictions, trades and traffics, where there
is to be found great abundance of gold, silver, precious stones, cloth of
gold, silks, all manner of spices, grocery wares, and other kinds of
merchandise of an inestimable price, which both the Spaniard and
Portuguese, through the length of their journeys, cannot well attain
unto.

4.  Also, we might inhabit some part of those countries, and settle there
such needy people of our country which now trouble the commonwealth, and
through want here at home are enforced to commit outrageous offences,
whereby they are daily consumed with the gallows.

5.  Moreover, we might from all the aforesaid places have a yearly
return, inhabiting for our staple some convenient place of America, about
Sierra Nevada or some other part, whereas it shall seem best for the
shortening of the voyage.

6.  Beside the exporting of our country commodities, which the Indians,
etc., much esteem, as appeareth in Esther, where the pomp is expressed of
the great King of India, Ahasuerus, who matched the  clothes
wherewith his houses and tents were apparelled with gold and silver, as
part of his greatest treasure, not mentioning velvets, silks, cloth of
gold, cloth of silver, or such like, being in those countries most
plentiful, whereby it plainly appeareth in what great estimation they
would have the cloths of this our country, so that there would be found a
far better vent for them by this means than yet this realm ever had; and
that without depending either upon France, Spain, Flanders, Portugal,
Hamborough, Emden, or any other part of Europe.

7.  Also here we shall increase both our ships and mariners without
burdening of the State.

8.  And also have occasion to set poor men's children to learn
handicrafts, and thereby to make trifles and such like, which the Indians
and those people do much esteem; by reason whereof, there should be none
occasion to have our country cumbered with loiterers, vagabonds, and such
like idle persons.

All these commodities would grew by following this our discovery without
injury done to any Christian prince by crossing them in any of their used
trades, whereby they might take any just occasion of offence.

Thus have I briefly showed you some part of the grounds of my opinion,
trusting that you will no longer judge me fantastic in this matter,
seeing I have conceived no hope of this voyage, but am persuaded
thereunto by the best cosmographers of our age, the same being confirmed
both by reason and certain experiences.

Also this discovery hath been divers times heretofore by others both
proposed, attempted, and performed.

It hath been proposed by Stephen Gomez unto Carolus, the fifth emperor in
the year of our Lord 1527, as Alphonse Ullva testifieth in the story of
Carolus' life, who would have set him forth in it (as the story
mentioneth) if the great want of money, by reason of his long wars, had
not caused him to surcease the same.

And the King of Portugal, fearing lest the emperor would have persevered
in this his enterprise, gave him, to leave the matter unattempted, the
sum of 350,000 crowns; and it is to be supposed that the King of Portugal
would not have given to the emperor such sums of money for eggs in
moonshine.

It hath been attempted by Corterialis the Portuguese, Scolmus the Dane,
and by Sebastian Cabot in the time of King Henry VII.

And it hath been performed by the three brethren, the Indians aforesaid,
and by Urdaneta, the friar of Mexico.

Also divers have proposed the like unto the French king, who hath sent
two or three times to have discovered the same; the discoverers spending
and consuming their victuals in searching the gulfs and bays between
Florida and Labrador, whereby the ice is broken to the after-comers.

So that the right way may now be easily found out in short time, and that
with little jeopardy and less expenses.

For America is discovered so far towards the north as Cape Frido, which
is at 62 degrees, and that part of Greenland next adjoining is known to
stand but at 72 degrees; so that we have but 10 degrees to sail north and
south to put the world out of doubt hereof; and it is likely that the
King of Spain and the King of Portugal would not have sat out all this
while but that they are sure to possess to themselves all that trade they
now use, and fear to deal in this discovery lest the Queen's Majesty,
having so good opportunity, and finding the commodity which thereby might
ensue to the commonwealth, would cut them off and enjoy the whole traffic
to herself, and thereby the Spaniards and Portuguese with their great
charges should beat the bush and other men catch the birds; which thing
they foreseeing, have commanded that no pilot of theirs, upon pain of
death, should seek to discover to the north-west, or plat out in any
sea-card any through passage that way by the north-west.

Now, if you will impartially compare the hope that remaineth to animate
me to this enterprise with those likelihoods which Columbus alleged
before Ferdinando, the King of Castilia, to prove that there were such
islands in the West Ocean as were after by him and others discovered, to
the great commodity of Spain and all the world, you will think then that
this North-West Passage to be most worthy travel therein.

For Columbus had none of the West Islands set forth unto him either in
globe or card, neither yet once mentioned of any writer (Plato excepted,
and the commentaries upon the same) from 942 years before Christ until
that day.

Moreover, Columbus himself had neither seen America nor any other of the
islands about it, neither understood he of them by the report of any
other that had seen them, but only comforted himself with this hope, that
the land had a beginning where the sea had an ending.  For as touching
that which the Spaniards do write of a Biscaine which should have taught
him the way thither, it is thought to be imagined of them to deprive
Columbus of his honour, being none of their countryman, but a stranger
born.

And if it were true of the Biscaine, yet did he but hit upon the matter,
or, at the least, gathered the knowledge of it by conjectures only.

And albeit myself have not seen this passage, or any part thereof, but am
ignorant of it as touching experience as Columbus was before his attempt
was made, yet have I both the report, relation, and authority of divers
most credible men, which have both seen and passed through some and every
part of this discovery, besides sundry reasons for my assurance thereof,
all which Columbus wanted.

These things considered and impartially weighed together, with the
wonderful commodities which this discovery may bring, especially to this
realm of England, I must needs conclude with learned Baptista Ramusius,
and divers other learned men, who said that this discovery hath been
reserved for some noble prince or worthy man, thereby to make himself
rich, and the world happy: desiring you to accept in good part this brief
and simple discourse, written in haste, which, if I may perceive that it
shall not sufficiently satisfy you in this behalf, I will then impart
unto you a large discourse, which I have written only of this discovery.

And further, because it sufficeth not only to knew that such a thing
there is, without ability to perform the same, I will at leisure make you
partaker of another simple discourse of navigation, wherein I have not a
little travelled, to make myself as sufficient to bring these things to
effect as I have been ready to offer myself therein.

And therein I have devised to amend the errors of usual sea-cards, whose
common fault is to make the degrees of longitude in every latitude of one
like bigness.

And have also devised therein a spherical instrument, with a compass of
variation for the perfect knowing of the longitude.

And a precise order to prick the sea-card, together with certain
infallible rules for the shortening of any discovery, to know at the
first entering of any strait whether it lies open to the ocean more ways
than one, how far soever the sea stretcheth itself into the land.

Desiring you hereafter never to mislike with me for the taking in hand of
any laudable and honest enterprise, for if, through pleasure and
idleness, we purchase shame, the pleasure vanisheth, but the shame
remaineth for ever.

And therefore, to give me leave without offence always to live and die in
this mind, _that he is not worthy to live at all that for fear or danger
of death shunneth his country's service and his own honour_, seeing death
is inevitable, and the fame of virtue immortal.  Wherefore, in this
behalf, _Mutare vel timere sperno_.




CERTAIN OTHER REASONS OR ARGUMENTS TO PROVE A PASSAGE BY THE NORTH-WEST.


_Learnedly written by Master Richard Willes_, _Gentleman_.

Four famous ways there be spoken of to those fruitful and wealthy
islands, which we do usually call Moluccas, continually haunted for gain,
and daily travelled for riches therein growing.  These islands, although
they stand east from the meridian, distant almost half the length of the
world, in extreme heat under the equinoctial line, possessed of infidels
and barbarians, yet by our neighbours great abundance of wealth there is
painfully sought in respect of the voyage dearly bought, and from thence
dangerously brought home to us.  Our neighbours I call the Portuguese, in
comparison of the Molucchians for nearness unto us, for like situation
westward as we have for their usual trade with us; for that the far
south-easterings do know this part of Europe by no other name than
Portugal, not greatly acquainted as yet with the other nations thereof.
Their voyage is very well understood of all men, and the south-eastern
way round about Africa, by the Cape of Good Hope, more spoken of, better
known and travelled, than that it may seem needful to discourse thereof
any farther.

The second way lieth south-west, between the West Indies, or South
America, and the south continent, through that narrow strait where
Magellan, first of all men that ever we do read of, passed these latter
years, caving thereunto therefore his name.  This way, no doubt, the
Spaniards would commodiously take, for that it lieth near unto their
dominions there, could the eastern current and Levant winds as easily
suffer men to return as speedily therewith they may be carried thither;
for the which difficulty, or rather impossibility of striving against the
force both of wind and stream, this passage is little or nothing used,
although it be very well known.

The third way, by the north-east, beyond all Europe and Asia, that worthy
and renowned knight Sir Hugh Willoughbie sought to his peril, enforced
there to end his life for cold, congealed and frozen to death.  And,
truly, this way consisteth rather in the imagination of geographers than
allowable either in reason, or approved by experience, as well it may
appear by the dangerous trending of the Scythian Cape set by Ortellius
under the 80th degree north, by the unlikely sailing in that northern
sea, always clad with ice and snow, or at the least continually pestered
therewith, if haply it be at any time dissolved, beside bays and shelves,
the water waxing more shallow towards the east, to say nothing of the
foul mists and dark fogs in the cold clime, of the little power of the
sun to clear the air, of the uncomfortable nights, so near the Pole, five
months long.

A fourth way to go unto these aforesaid happy islands, the Moluccas, Sir
Humphrey Gilbert, a learned and valiant knight, discourseth of at large
in his new "Passage to Cathay."  The enterprise of itself being virtuous,
the fact must doubtless deserve high praise, and whensoever it shall be
finished the fruits thereof cannot be small; where virtue is guide, there
is fame a follower, and fortune a companion.  But the way is dangerous,
the passage doubtful, the voyage not thoroughly known, and therefore
gainsaid by many, after this manner.

First, who can assure us of any passage rather by the north-west than by
the north-east? do not both ways lie in equal distance from the North
Pole? stand not the North Capes of either continent under like elevation?
is not the ocean sea beyond America farther distant from our meridian by
thirty or forty degrees west than the extreme points of Cathay eastward,
if Ortellius' general card of the world be true?  In the north-east that
noble knight--Sir Hugh Willoughbie perished for cold, and can you then
promise a passenger any better hap by the north-west, who hath gone for
trial's sake, at any time, this way out of Europe to Cathay?

If you seek the advice herein of such as make profession in cosmography,
Ptolemy, the father of geography, and his eldest children, will answer by
their maps with a negative, concluding most of the sea within the land,
and making an end of the world northward, near the 63rd degree.  The same
opinion, when learning chiefly flourished, was received in the Romans'
time, as by their poets' writings it may appear.  "Et te colet ultima
Thule," said Virgil, being of opinion that Iceland was the extreme part
of the world habitable toward the north.  Joseph Moletius, an Italian,
and Mercator, a German, for knowledge men able to be compared with the
best geographers of our time, the one in his half spheres of the whole
world, the other in some of his great globes, have continued the West
Indies land, even to the North Pole, and consequently cut off all passage
by sea that way.

The same doctors, Mercator in other of his globes and maps, Moletius in
his sea-card, nevertheless doubting of so great continuance of the former
continent, have opened a gulf betwixt the West Indies and the extreme
northern land; but such a one that either is not to be travelled for the
causes in the first objection alleged, or clean shut up from us in Europe
by Greenland, the south end whereof Moletius maketh firm land with
America, the north part continent with Lapland and Norway.

Thirdly, the greatest favourers of this voyage cannot deny but that, if
any such passage be, it lieth subject unto ice and snow for the most part
of the year, whereas it standeth in the edge of the frosty zone.  Before
the sun hath warmed the air and dissolved the ice, each one well knoweth
that there can be no sailing; the ice once broken through the continual
abode, the sun maketh a certain season in those parts.  How shall it be
possible for so weak a vessel as a ship is to hold out amid whole
islands, as it were, of ice continually beating on each side, and at the
mouth of that gulf, issuing down furiously from the north, safely to
pass, when whole mountains of ice and snow shall be tumbled down upon
her?

Well, grant the West Indies not to continue continent unto the Pole,
grant there be a passage between these two lands, let the gulf lie nearer
us than commonly in cards we find it set, namely, between the sixty-first
and sixty-fourth degrees north, as Gemma Frisius in his maps and globes
imagineth it, and so left by our countryman Sebastian Cabot in his table
which the Earl of Bedford hath at Theinies; let the way be void of all
difficulties, yet doth it not follow that we have free passage to Cathay.
For example's sake, you may coast all Norway, Finmarke, and Lapland, and
then bow southward to St. Nicholas, in Moscovy.  You may likewise in the
Mediterranean Sea fetch Constantinople and the mouth of the Don, yet is
there no passage by sea through Moscovy into Pont Euxine, now called Mare
Maggiore.  Again, in the aforesaid Mediterranean Sea we sail to
Alexandria in Egypt, the barbarians bring their pearl and spices from the
Moluccas up the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf to Suez, scarcely three days'
journey from the aforesaid haven; yet have we no way by sea from
Alexandria to the Moluccas for that isthmus or little trait of land
between the two seas.  In like manner, although the northern passage be
free at sixty-one degrees latitude, and the west ocean beyond America,
usually called Mare del Sur, known to be open at forty degrees elevation
for the island of Japan, yea, three hundred leagues northerly of Japan,
yet may there be land to hinder the through passage that way by sea, as
in the examples aforesaid it falleth out, Asia and America there being
joined together in one continent.  Nor can this opinion seem altogether
frivolous unto any one that diligently peruseth our cosmographers'
doings.  Josephus Moletius is of that mind, not only in his plain
hemispheres of the world, but also in his sea-card.  The French
geographers in like manner be of the same opinion, as by their map cut
out in form of a heart you may perceive as though the West Indies were
part of Asia, which sentence well agreeth with that old conclusion in the
schools, _Quid-quid praeter Africum et Europam est_, _Asia est_,
"Whatsoever land doth neither appertain unto Africa nor to Europe is part
of Asia."

Furthermore, it were to small purpose to make so long, so painful, so
doubtful a voyage by such a new found way, if in Cathay you should
neither be suffered to land for silks and silver, nor able to fetch the
Molucca spices and pearl for piracy in those seas.  Of a law denying all
aliens to enter into China, and forbidding all the inhabiters under a
great penalty to let in any stranger into those countries, shall you read
in the report of Galeotto Petera, there imprisoned with other Portuguese,
as also in the Japanese letters, how for that cause the worthy traveller
Xavierus bargained with a barbarian merchant for a great sum of pepper to
be brought into Canton, a port in Cathay.  The great and dangerous piracy
used in those seas no man can be ignorant of that listeth to read the
Japanese and Indian history.

Finally, all this great labour would be lost, all these charges spent in
vain, if in the end our travellers might not be able to return again, and
bring safely home into their own native country that wealth and riches
they in foreign regions with adventure of goods and danger of their lives
have sought for.  By the north-east there is no way; the South-East
Passage the Portuguese do hold, as the lords of those seas.  At the
south-west, Magellan's experience hath partly taught us, and partly we
are persuaded by reason, how the eastern current striketh so furiously on
that strait, and falleth with such force into that narrow gulf, that
hardly any ship can return that way into our west ocean out of Mare del
Sur.  The which, if it be true, as truly it is, then we may say that the
aforesaid eastern current, or Levant course of waters, continually
following after the heavenly motions, loseth not altogether its force,
but is doubled rather by another current from out the north-east, in the
passage between America and the North Land, whither it is of necessity
carried, having none other way to maintain itself in circular motion, and
consequently the force and fury thereof to be no less in the Strait of
Anian, where it striketh south into Mare del Sur beyond America (if any
such strait of sea there be), than in the strait of Magellan, both
straits being of like breadth, as in Belognine Salterius' table of "New
France," and in Don Diego Hermano de Toledo's card for navigation in that
region, we do find precisely set down.

Nevertheless, to approve that there lieth a way to Cathay at the
north-west from out of Europe, we have experience, namely of three
brethren that went that journey, as Gemma Frisius recordeth, and left a
name unto that strait, whereby now it is called Fretum Trium Fratrum.  We
do read again of a Portuguese that passed this strait, of whom Master
Frobisher speaketh, that was imprisoned therefore many years in Lisbon,
to verify the old Spanish proverb, "I suffer for doing well."  Likewise,
An. Urdaneta, a friar of Mexico, came out of Mare del Sur this way into
Germany; his card, for he was a great discoverer, made by his own
experience and travel in that voyage, hath been seen by gentlemen of good
credit.

Now if the observation and remembrance of things breedeth experience, and
of experience proceedeth art, and the certain knowledge we have in all
faculties, as the best philosophers that ever were do affirm truly the
voyage of these aforesaid travellers that have gone out of Europe into
Mare del Sur, and returned thence at the north-west, do most evidently
conclude that way to be navigable, and that passage free; so much the
more we are so to think, for that the first principle and chief ground in
all geography, as Ptolemy saith, is the history of travel, that is,
reports made by travellers skilful in geography and astronomy, of all
such things in their journey as to geography do belong.  It only
remaineth, that we now answer to those arguments that seemed to make
against this former conclusion.

The first objection is of no force, that general table of the world, set
forth by Ortellius or Mercator, for it greatly skilleth not, being
unskilfully drawn for that point, as manifestly it may appear unto any
one that compareth the same with Gemma Frisius' universal map, with his
round quartered card, with his globe, with Sebastian Cabot's table, and
Ortellius' general map alone, worthily preferred in this case before all
Mercator's and Ortellius' other doings: for that Cabot was not only a
skilful seaman, but a long traveller, and such a one as entered
personally that strait, sent by King Henry VII. to make this aforesaid
discovery, as in his own discourse of navigation you may read in his card
drawn with his own hand, that the mouth of the north-western strait lieth
near the 318th meridian, between 61 and 64 degrees in the elevation,
continuing the same breadth about ten degrees west, where it openeth
southerly more and more, until it come under the tropic of Cancer; and so
runneth into Mare del Sur, at the least 18 degrees more in breadth there
than it was where it first began; otherwise I could as well imagine this
passage to be more unlikely than the voyage to Moscovy, and more
impossible than it for the far situation and continuance thereof in the
frosty clime: as now I can affirm it to be very possible and most likely
in comparison thereof, for that it neither coasteth so far north as the
Moscovian passage doth, neither is this strait so long as that, before it
bow down southerly towards the sun again.

The second argument concludeth nothing.  Ptolemy knew not what was above
16 degrees south beyond the equinoctial line, he was ignorant of all
passages northward from the elevation of 63 degrees, he knew no ocean sea
beyond Asia, yet have the Portuguese trended the Cape of Good Hope at the
south point of Africa, and travelled to Japan, an island in the east
ocean, between Asia and America; our merchants in the time of King Edward
the Sixth discovered the Moscovian passage farther north than Thule, and
showed Greenland not to be continent with Lapland and Norway: the like
our north-western travellers have done, declaring by their navigation
that way the ignorance of all cosmographers that either do join Greenland
with America, or continue the West Indies with that frosty region under
the North Pole.  As for Virgil, he sang according to the knowledge of men
in his time, as another poet did of the hot zone.

Quarum quae media est, non est habitabilis aestu.  Imagining, as most men
then did, Zonam Torridam, the hot zone, to be altogether dishabited for
heat, though presently we know many famous and worthy kingdoms and cities
in that part of the earth, and the island of S. Thomas near Ethiopia, and
the wealthy islands for the which chiefly all these voyages are taken in
hand, to be inhabited even under the equinoctial line.

To answer the third objection, besides Cabot and all other travellers'
navigations, the only credit of Master Frobisher may suffice, who lately,
through all these islands of ice and mountains of snow, passed that way,
even beyond the gulf that tumbleth down from the north, and in some
places, though he drew one inch thick ice, as he returning in August did,
came home safely again.

The fourth argument is altogether frivolous and vain, for neither is
there any isthmus or strait of land between America and Asia, nor can
these two lands jointly be one continent.  The first part of my answer is
manifestly allowed by Homer, whom that excellent geographer, Strabo,
followeth, yielding him in this faculty the prize.  The author of that
book likewise _On the Universe_ to Alexander, attributed unto Aristotle,
is of the same opinion that Homer and Strabo be of, in two or three
places.  Dionysius, in his _Periegesis_, hath this verse, "So doeth the
ocean sea run round about the world:" speaking only of Europe, Africa,
and Asia, as then Asia was travelled and known.  With these doctors may
you join Pomponius Mela, Pliny, Pius, in his description of Asia.  All
the which writers do no less confirm the whole eastern side of Asia to be
compassed about with the sea; then Plato doth affirm in is _Timaeus_,
under the name Atlantis, the West Indies to be an island, as in a special
discourse thereof R. Eden writeth, agreeable unto the sentence of
Proclus, Marsilius Ficinus, and others.  Out of Plato it is gathered that
America is an island.  Homer, Strabo, Aristotle, Dionysius, Mela, Pliny,
Pius, affirm the continent of Asia, Africa, and Europe, to be environed
with the ocean.  I may therefore boldly say (though later intelligences
thereof had we none at all) that Asia and the West Indies be not tied
together by any isthmus or strait of land, contrary to the opinion of
some new cosmographers, by whom doubtfully this matter hath been brought
in controversy.  And thus much for the first part of my answer unto the
fourth objection.

The second part, namely, that America and Asia cannot be one continent,
may thus be proved:--"The most rivers take down that way their course,
where the earth is most hollow and deep," writeth Aristotle; and the sea
(saith he in the same place), as it goeth further, so is it found deeper.
Into what gulf do the Moscovian rivers Onega, Dwina, Ob, pour out their
streams? northward out of Moscovy into the sea.  Which way doth that sea
strike?  The south is main land, the eastern coast waxeth more and more
shallow: from the north, either naturally, because that part of the earth
is higher, or of necessity, for that the forcible influence of some
northern stars causeth the earth there to shake off the sea, as some
philosophers do think; or, finally, for the great store of waters
engendered in that frosty and cold climate, that the banks are not able
to hold them.  From the north, I say, continually falleth down great
abundance of water; so this north-eastern current must at the length
abruptly bow toward us south on the west side of Finmark and Norway, or
else strike down south-west above Greenland, or betwixt Greenland and
Iceland, into the north-west strait we speak of, as of congruence it
doth, if you mark the situation of that region, and by the report of
Master Frobisher experience teacheth us.  And, Master Frobisher, the
further he travelled in the former passage, as he told me, the deeper
always he found the sea.  Lay you now the sum hereof together, the rivers
run where the channels are most hollow, the sea in taking his course
waxeth deeper, the sea waters fall continually from the north southward,
the north-eastern current striketh down into the strait we speak of and
is there augmented with whole mountains of ice and snow falling down
furiously out from the land under the North Pole.  Where store of water
is, there is it a thing impossible to want sea; where sea not only doth
not want, but waxeth deeper, there can be discovered no land.  Finally,
whence I pray you came the contrary tide, that Master Frobisher met
withal, after that he had sailed no small way in that passage, if there
be any isthmus or strait of land betwixt the aforesaid north-western gulf
and Mare del Sur, to join Asia and America together?  That conclusion
arrived at in the schools, "Whatsoever land doth neither appertain unto
Africa, nor to Europe, is part of Asia," was meant of the parts of the
world then known, and so is it of right to be understood.

The fifth objection requireth for answer wisdom and policy in the
traveller to win the barbarians' favour by some good means; and so to arm
and strengthen himself, that when he shall have the repulse in one coast,
he may safely travel to another, commodiously taking his convenient
times, and discreetly making choice of them with whom he will thoroughly
deal.  To force a violent entry would for us Englishmen be very hard,
considering the strength and valour of so great a nation, far distant
from us, and the attempt thereof might be most perilous unto the doers,
unless their park were very good.

Touching their laws against strangers, you shall read nevertheless in the
same relations of Galeotto Perera, that the Cathaian king is wont to
grant free access unto all foreigners that trade into his country for
merchandise, and a place of liberty for them to remain in; as the Moors
had, until such time as they had brought the Loutea or Lieutenant of that
coast to be a circumcised Saracen: wherefore some of them were put to the
sword, the rest were scattered abroad; at Fuquien, a great city in China,
certain of them are yet this day to be seen.  As for the Japanese, they
be most desirous to be acquainted with strangers.  The Portuguese, though
they were straitly handled there at the first, yet in the end they found
great favour at the prince's hands, insomuch that the Loutea or President
that misused them was therefore put to death.  The rude Indian canoe
voyageth in those seas, the Portuguese, the Saracens, and Moors travel
continually up and down that reach from Japan to China, from China to
Malacca, from Malacca to the Moluccas, and shall an Englishman better
appointed than any of them all (that I say no more of our navy) fear to
sail in that ocean? what seat at all do want piracy? what navigation is
there void of peril?

To the last argument our travellers need not to seek their return by the
north-east, neither shall they be constrained, except they list, either
to attempt Magellan's strait at the south-west, or to be in danger of the
Portuguese on the south-east; they may return by the north-west, that
same way they do go forth, as experience hath showed.

The reason alleged for proof of the contrary may be disposed after this
manner: And first, it may be called in controversy, whether any current
continually be forced by the motion of primum mobile, round about the
world or no; for learned men do diversely handle that question.  The
natural course of all waters is downward, wherefore of congruence they
fall that way where they find the earth most low and deep: in respect
whereof, it was erst said, the seas do strike from the northern lands
southerly.  Violently the seas are tossed and troubled divers ways with
the winds, increased and diminished by the course of the moon, hoisted up
and down through the sundry operations of the sun and the stars: finally,
some be of opinion that the seas be carried in part violently about the
world, after the daily motion of the highest movable heaven, in like
manner as the elements of air and fire, with the rest of the heavenly
spheres, are from the east unto the west.  And this they do call their
eastern current, or Levant stream.  Some such current may not be denied
to be of great force in the hot zone, for the nearness thereof unto the
centre of the sun, and blustering eastern winds violently driving the
seas westward; howbeit in the temperate climes the sun being farther off,
and the winds more diverse, blowing as much from the north, the west, and
south, as from the east, this rule doth not effectually withhold us from
travelling eastwards, neither be we kept ever back by the aforesaid
Levant winds and stream.  But in Magellan strait we are violently driven
back westward, ergo through the north-western strait or Anian frith shall
we not be able to return eastward: it followeth not.  The first, for that
the north-western strait hath more sea room at the least by one hundred
English miles than Magellan's strait hath, the only want whereof causeth
all narrow passages generally to be most violent.  So would I say in the
Anian Gulf, if it were so narrow as Don Diego and Zalterius have painted
it out, any return that way to be full of difficulties, in respect of
such straitness thereof, not for the nearness of the sun or eastern
winds, violently forcing that way any Levant stream; but in that place
there is more sea room by many degrees, if the cards of Cabot and Gemma
Frisius, and that which Tramezine imprinted, be true.

And hitherto reasons see I none at all, but that I may as well give
credit unto their doings as to any of the rest.  It must be
_Peregrinationis historia_, that is, true reports of skilful travellers,
as Ptolemy writeth, that in such controversies of geography must put us
out of doubt.  Ortellius, in his universal tables, in his particular maps
of the West Indies, of all Asia, of the northern kingdoms, of the East
Indies; Mercator in some of his globes and general maps of the world,
Moletius in his universal table of the Globe divided, in his sea-card and
particular tables of the East Indies Zanterius and Don Diego with
Fernando Bertely, and others, do so much differ both from Gemma Frisius
and Cabot among themselves, and in divers places from themselves,
concerning the divers situation and sundry limits of America, that one
may not so rashly as truly surmise these men either to be ignorant in
those points touching the aforesaid region, or that the maps they have
given out unto the world were collected only by them, and never of their
own drawing.




THE FIRST VOYAGE OF MASTER MARTIN FROBISHER


_To the North-West for the search of the passage or strait to China_,
_written by Christopher Hall_, _and made in the year of our Lord 1576_.

Upon Monday, the thirteenth of May, the barque _Gabriel_ was launched at
Redriffe, and upon the twenty-seventh day following she sailed from
Redriffe to Ratcliffe.

The seventh of June being Thursday, the two barques, viz., the _Gabriel_
and the _Michael_, and our pinnace, set sail at Ratcliffe, and bare down
to Deptford, and there we anchored.  The cause was, that our pinnace
burst her bowsprit and foremast aboard of a ship that rowed at Deptford,
else we meant to have passed that day by the court, then at Greenwich.

The eighth day being Friday, about twelve o'clock, we weighed at Deptford
and set sail all three of us and bare down by the court, where we shot
off our ordinance, and made the best show we could; her Majesty beholding
the same commended it, and bade us farewell with shaking her hand at us
out of the window.  Afterwards she sent a gentleman aboard of us, who
declared that her Majesty had good liking of our doings, and thanked us
for it, and also willed our captain to come the next day to the court to
take his leave of her.

The same day, towards night, Master Secretary Woolley came aboard of us,
and declared to the company that her Majesty had appointed him to give
them charge to be obedient, and diligent to their captain and governors
in all things, and wished us happy success.

The ninth day about noon, the wind being westerly, having our anchors
aboard ready to set sail to depart, we wanted some of our company, and
therefore stayed and moored them again.

Sunday, the tenth of June, we set sail from Blackwall at a south-west and
by west sun, the wind being at north-north-west, and sailed to Gravesend,
and anchored there at a west-north-west sun, the wind being as before.

The twelfth day, being over against Gravesend, by the Castle or
Blockhouse, we observed the latitude, which was 51 degrees 33 minutes,
and in that place the variation of the compass is 11 degrees and a half.
This day we departed from Gravesend at a west-south-west sun, the wind at
north and by east a fair gale, and sailed to the west part of Tilbury
Hope, and so turned down the Hope, and at a west sun the wind came to the
east-south-east, and we anchored in seven fathoms, being low water.

[Here there follows an abstract of the ship's log, showing the navigation
until the 28th of July, when they had sight of land supposed to be
Labrador.]

July 28th.  From 4 to 8, 4 leagues: from 8. to 12, 3 leagues: from 12 to
4, north and by west, 6 leagues, but very foggy; from thence to 8 of the
clock in the morning little wind, but at the clearing up of the fog we
had sight of land, which I supposed to be Labrador, with great store of
ice about the land; I ran in towards it, and sounded, but could get no
land at 100 fathoms, and the ice being so thick I could not get to the
shore, and so lay off and came clear of the ice.  Upon Monday we came
within a mile of the shore, and sought a harbour; all the sound was full
of ice, and our boat rowing ashore could get no ground at 100 fathom,
within a cable's length of the shore; then we sailed east-north-east
along the shore, for so the land lieth, and the current is there great,
setting north-east and south-west; and if we could have gotten anchor
ground we would have seen with what force it had run, but I judge a ship
may drive a league and a half in one hour with that tide.

This day, at four of the clock in the morning, being fair and clear, we
had sight of a headland as we judged bearing from us north and by east,
and we sailed north-east and by north to that land, and when we came
thither we could not get to the land for ice, for the ice stretched along
the coast, so that we could not come to the land by 5 leagues.

Wednesday, the first of August, it calmed, and in the afternoon I caused
my boat to be hoisted out, being hard by a great island of ice, and I and
four men rowed to that ice, and sounded within two cables' length of it,
and had 16 fathoms and little stones, and after that sounded again within
a minion's shot, and had ground at 100 fathoms, and fair sand.  We
sounded the next day a quarter of a mile from it, and had 60 fathoms
rough ground, and at that present being aboard, that great island of ice
fell one part from another, making a noise as if a great cliff had fallen
into the sea.  And at 4 of the clock I sounded again, and had 90 fathoms,
and small black stones, and little white stones like pearls.  The tide
here did set to the shore.

We sailed this day south-south-east ofward, and laid it a tric.

The next day was calm and thick, with a great sea.

The next day we sailed south and by east two leagues, and at 8 of the
clock in the forenoon we cast about to the eastward.

The sixth day it cleared, and we ran north-west into the shore to get a
harbour, and being towards night, we notwithstanding kept at sea.

The seventh day we plied room with the shore, but being near it it waxed
thick, and we bare off again.

The eighth day we bended in towards the shore again.

The ninth day we sounded, but could get no ground at 130 fathoms.  The
weather was calm.

The tenth I took four men and myself, and rode to shore, to an island one
league from the main, and there the flood setteth south-west along the
shore, and it floweth as near as I could judge so too.  I could not tarry
to prove it, because the ship was a great way from me, and I feared a
fog; but when I came ashore it was low water.  I went to the top of the
islands and before I came back it was hied a foot water, and so without
tarrying I came aboard.

The eleventh we found our latitude to be 63 degrees and 8 minutes, and
this day entered the strait.

The twelfth we set sail towards an island called the Gabriel's Island,
which was 10 leagues then from us.

We espied a sound, and bare with it, and came to a sandy bay, where we
came to an anchor, the land bearing east-south-east of us, and there we
rode all night in 8 fathom water.  It floweth there at a south-east moon;
we called it Prior's Sound, being from the Gabriel's Island 10 leagues.

The fourteenth we weighed and ran into another sound, where we anchored
in 8 fathoms water, fair sand, and black ooze, and there caulked our
ship, being weak from the gunwales upward, and took in fresh water.

The fifteenth day we weighed, and sailed to Prior's Bay, being a mile
from thence.

The sixteenth day was calm, and we rode still without ice, but presently
within two hours it was frozen round about the ship, a quarter of an inch
thick, and that bay very fair and calm.

The seventeenth day we weighed, and came to Thomas William's Island.

The eighteenth day we sailed north-north-west and anchored again in 23
fathoms, and caught ooze under Bircher's Island, which is from the former
island 10 leagues.

The nineteenth day in the morning, being calm, and no wind, the captain
and I took our boat, with eight men in her, to row us ashore, to see if
there were there any people, or no, and going to the top of the island,
we had sight of seven boats, which came rowing from the east side toward
that island; whereupon we returned aboard again.  At length we sent our
boat, with five men in her, to see whither they rowed, and so with a
white cloth brought one of their boats with their men along the shore,
rowing after our boat, till such time as they saw our ship, and then they
rowed ashore.  Then I went on shore myself, and gave every of them a
threaden point, and brought one of them aboard of me, where he did eat
and drink, and then carried him on shore again.  Whereupon all the rest
came aboard with their boats, being nineteen persons, and they spake, but
we understood them not.  They be like to Tartars, with long black hair,
broad faces, and flat noses, and tawny in colour, wearing seal skins, and
so do the women, not differing in the fashion, but the women are marked
in the face with blue streaks down the cheeks and round about the eyes.
Their boats are made all of seal skins, with a keel of wood within the
skin: the proportion of them is like a Spanish shallop, save only they be
flat in the bottom and sharp at both ends.

The twentieth day we weighed, and went to the east side of this island,
and I and the captain, with four men more, went on shore, and there we
saw their houses, and the people espying us, came rowing towards our
boat, whereupon we plied to our boat; and we being in our boat and they
ashore, they called to us, and we rowed to them, and one of their company
came into our boat, and we carried him aboard, and gave him a bell and a
knife; so the captain and I willed five of our men to set him ashore at a
rock, and not among the company which they came from, but their
wilfulness was such that they would go to them, and so were taken
themselves and our boat lost.

The next day in the morning we stood in near the shore and shot off a
fauconet, and sounded our trumpet, but we could hear nothing of our men.
This sound we called the Five Men's Sound, and plied out of it, but
anchored again in 30 fathoms and ooze; and riding there all night, in the
morning the snow lay a foot thick upon our hatches.

The two-and-twentieth day in the morning we weighed, and went again to
the place where we lost our men and our boat.  We had sight of fourteen
boats, and some came near to us, but we could learn nothing of our men.
Among the rest, we enticed one in a boat to our ship's side with a bell;
and in giving him the bell we took him and his boat, and so kept him, and
so rowed down to Thomas William's island, and there anchored all night.

The twenty-sixth day we weighed to come homeward, and by twelve of the
clock at noon we were thwart of Trumpet's Island.

The next day we came thwart of Gabriel's Island, and at eight of the
clock at night we had the Cape Labrador west from us ten leagues.

The twenty-eighth day we went our course south-east.

We sailed south-east and by east, twenty-two leagues.

The first day of September, in the morning, we had sight of the land of
Friesland, being eight leagues from us, but we could not come nearer it
for the monstrous ice that lay about it.  From this day till the sixth of
this month we ran along Iceland, and had the south part of it at eight of
the clock east from us ten leagues.

The seventh day of this month we had a very terrible storm, by force
whereof one of our men was blown into the sea out of our waste, but he
caught hold of the foresail sheet, and there held till the captain
plucked him again into the ship.

The twenty-fifth day of this month we had sight of the island of Orkney,
which was then east from us.

The first day of October we had sight of the Sheld, and so sailed along
the coast, and anchored at Yarmouth, and the next day we came into
Harwich.

              THE LANGUAGE OF THE PEOPLE OF META INCOGNITA.
Argotteyt, a hand.                  Attegay, a coat.
Cangnawe, a nose.                   Polleuetagay, a knife.
Arered, an eye.                     Accaskay, a ship.
Keiotot, a tooth.                   Coblone, a thumb.
Mutchatet, the head.                Teckkere, the foremost finger.
Chewat, an ear.                     Ketteckle, the middle finger.
Comagaye, a leg.                    Mekellacane, the fourth finger.
Atoniagay, a foot.
Callagay, a pair of breeches.       Yachethronc, the little finger.
THE SECOND VOYAGE OF MASTER MARTIN FROBISHER,


_Made to the West and North-West Regions in the year 1577_, _with a
Description of the Country and People_, _written by Dionise Settle_.

On Whit Sunday, being the sixth-and-twentieth day of May, in the year of
our Lord God 1577, Captain Frobisher departed from Blackwall--with one of
the Queen's Majesty's ships called the _Aid_, of nine score ton or
thereabout, and two other little barques likewise, the one called the
_Gabriel_, whereof Master Fenton, a gentleman of my Lord of Warwick's,
was captain; and the other the _Michael_, whereof Master York, a
gentleman of my lord admiral's, was captain, accompanied with seven score
gentlemen, soldiers, and sailors, well furnished with victuals and other
provisions necessary for one half year--on this, his second year, for the
further discovering of the passage to Cathay and other countries
thereunto adjacent, by west and north-west navigations, which passage or
way is supposed to be on the north and north-west parts of America, and
the said America to be an island environed with the sea, where through
our merchants might have course and recourse with their merchandise from
these our northernmost parts of Europe, to those Oriental coasts of Asia
in much shorter time and with greater benefit than any others, to their
no little commodity and profit that do or shall traffic the same.  Our
said captain and general of this present voyage and company, having the
year before, with two little pinnaces to his great danger, and no small
commendations, given a worthy attempt towards the performance thereof, is
also pressed when occasion shall be ministered to the benefit of his
prince and native country--to adventure himself further therein.  As for
this second voyage, it seemeth sufficient that he hath better explored
and searched the commodities of those people and countries, with
sufficient commodity unto the adventurers, which, in his first voyage the
year before, he had found out.

Upon which considerations the day and year before expressed, he departed
from Blackwall to Harwich, where making an accomplishment of things
necessary, the last of May we hoisted up sails, and with a merry wind the
7th of June we arrived at the islands called Orchades, or vulgarly
Orkney, being in number thirty, subject and adjacent to Scotland, where
we made provision of fresh water, in the doing whereof our general
licensed the gentlemen and soldiers, for their recreation, to go on
shore.  At our landing the people fled from their poor cottages with
shrieks and alarms, to warn their neighbours of enemies, but by gentle
persuasions we reclaimed them to their houses.  It seemeth they are often
frighted with pirates, or some other enemies, that move them to such
sudden fear.  Their houses are very simply builded with pebble stone,
without any chimneys, the fire being made in the midst thereof.  The good
man, wife, children, and other of their family, eat and sleep on the one
side of the house, and their cattle on the other, very beastly and rudely
in respect of civilisation.  They are destitute of wood, their fire is
turf and cow shardes.  They have corn, bigge, and oats, with which they
pay their king's rent to the maintenance of his house.  They take great
quantity of fish, which they dry in the wind and sun; they dress their
meat very filthily, and eat it without salt.  Their apparel is after the
nudest sort of Scotland.  Their money is all base.  Their Church and
religion is reformed according to the Scots.  The fishermen of England
can better declare the dispositions of those people than I, wherefore I
remit other their usages to their reports, as yearly repairers thither in
their courses to and from Iceland for fish.

We departed here hence the 8th of June, and followed our course between
west and north-west until the 4th of July, all which time we had no
night, but that easily, and without any impediment, we had, when we were
so disposed, the fruition of our books, and other pleasures to pass away
the time, a thing of no small moment to such as wander in unknown seas
and long navigations, especially when both the winds and raging surges do
pass their common and wonted course.  This benefit endureth in those
parts not six weeks, whilst the sun is near the tropic of Cancer, but
where the pole is raised to 70 or 80 degrees it continueth the longer.

All along these seas, after we were six days sailing from Orkney, we met,
floating in the sea, great fir trees, which, as we judged, were, with the
fury of great floods, rooted up, and so driven into the sea.  Iceland
hath almost no other wood nor fuel but such as they take up upon their
coasts.  It seemeth that these trees are driven from some part of the
Newfoundland, with the current that setteth from the west to the east.

The 4th of July we came within the making of Friesland.  From this shore,
ten or twelve leagues, we met great islands of ice of half a mile, some
more, some less in compass, showing above the sea thirty or forty
fathoms, and as we supposed fast on ground, where, with our lead, we
could scarce sound the bottom for depth.

Here, in place of odoriferous and fragrant smells of sweet gums and
pleasant notes of musical birds, which other countries in more temperate
zones do yield, we tasted the most boisterous Boreal blasts, mixed with
snow and hail, in the months of June and July, nothing inferior to our
untemperate winter: a sudden alteration, and especially in a place of
parallel, where the pole is not elevated above 61 degrees, at which
height other countries more to the north, yea unto 70 degrees, show
themselves more temperate than this doth.  All along this coast ice lieth
as a continual bulwark, and so defendeth the country, that those which
would land there incur great danger.  Our general, three days together,
attempted with the ship boat to have gone on shore, which, for that
without great danger he could not accomplish, he deferred it until a more
convenient time.  All along the coast lie very high mountains, covered
with snow, except in such places where, through the steepness of the
mountains, of force it must needs fall.  Four days coasting along this
land we found no sign of habitation.  Little birds which we judged to
have lost the shore, by reason of thick fogs which that country is much
subject unto, came flying to our ships, which causeth us to suppose that
the country is both more tolerable and also habitable within than the
outward shore maketh show or signification.

From hence we departed the 8th of July, and the 16th of the same we came
with the making of land, which land our general the year before had named
the Queen's Forehand, being an island, as we judge, lying near the
supposed continent with America, and on the other side, opposite to the
same, one other island, called Halles Isle, after the name of the master
of the ship, near adjacent to the firm land, supposed continent with
Asia.  Between the which two islands there is a large entrance or strait,
called Frobisher's Strait, after the name of our general, the first
finder thereof.  This said strait is supposed to have passage into the
sea of Sur, which I leave unknown as yet.

It seemeth that either here, or not far hence, the sea should have more
large entrance than in other parts within the frozen or untemperate zone,
and that some contrary tide, either from the east or west, with main
force casteth out that great quantity of ice which cometh floating from
this coast, even unto Friesland, causing that country to seem more
untemperate than others much more northerly than the same.

I cannot judge that any temperature under the Pole, being the time of the
Sun's northern declination, half a year together, and one whole day
(considering that the sun's elevation surmounteth not twenty-three
degrees and thirty minutes), can have power to dissolve such monstrous
and huge ice, comparable to great mountains, except by some other force,
as by swift currents and tides, with the help of the said day of half a
year.

Before we came within the making of these lands, we tasted cold storms,
insomuch that it seemed we had changed with winter, if the length of the
days had not removed us from that opinion.

At our first coming, the straits seemed to be shut up with a long mure of
ice, which gave no little cause of discomfort unto us all; but our
general (to whose diligence, imminent dangers and difficult attempts
seemed nothing in respect of his willing mind for the commodity of his
prince and country), with two little pinnaces prepared of purpose, passed
twice through them to the east shore, and the islands thereunto adjacent;
and the ship, with the two barques, lay off and on something farther into
the sea from the danger of the ice.

Whilst he was searching the country near the shore, some of the people of
the country showed themselves, leaping and dancing, with strange shrieks
and cries, which gave no little admiration to our men.  Our general,
desirous to allure them unto him by fair means, caused knives and other
things to be proffered unto them, which they would not take at our hands;
but being laid on the ground, and the party going away, they came and
took up, leaving something of theirs to countervail the same.  At the
length, two them, leaving their weapons, came down to our general and
master, who did the like to them, commanding the company to stay, and
went unto them, who, after certain dumb signs and mute congratulations,
began to lay hands upon them, but they deliverly escaped, and ran to
their bows and arrows and came fiercely upon them, not respecting the
rest of our company, which were ready for their defence, but with their
arrows hurt divers of them.  We took the one, and the other escaped.

Whilst our general was busied in searching the country, and those islands
adjacent on the east shore, the ships and barques, having great care not
to put far into the sea from him, for that he had small store of
victuals, were forced to abide in a cruel tempest, chancing in the night
amongst and in the thickest of the ice, which was so monstrous that even
the least of a thousand had been of force sufficient to have shivered our
ship and barques into small portions, if God (who in all necessities hath
care upon the infirmity of man) had not provided for this our extremity a
sufficient remedy, through the light of the night, whereby we might well
discern to flee from such imminent dangers, which we avoided within
fourteen bourdes in one watch, the space of four hours.  If we had not
incurred this danger amongst these monstrous islands of ice, we should
have lost our general and master, and the most of our best sailors, which
were on the shore destitute of victuals; but by the valour of our master
gunner, Master Jackman and Andrew Dier, the master's mates, men expert
both in navigation and other good qualities, we were all content to incur
the dangers afore rehearsed, before we would, with our own safety, run
into the seas, to the destruction of our said general and his company.

The day following, being the 19th of July, our captain returned to the
ship with good news of great riches, which showed itself in the bowels of
those barren mountains, wherewith we were all satisfied.  A sudden
mutation.  The one part of us being almost swallowed up the night before,
with cruel Neptune's force, and the rest on shore, taking thought for
their greedy paunches how to find the way to Newfoundland; at one moment
we were racked with joy, forgetting both where we were and what we had
suffered.  Behold the glory of man: to-night contemning riches, and
rather looking for death than otherwise, and to-morrow devising how to
satisfy his greedy appetite with gold.

Within four days after we had been at the entrance of the straits, the
north-west and west winds dispersed the ice into the sea, and made us a
large entrance into the Straits, that without impediment, on the 19th
July, we entered them; and the 20th thereof our general and master, with
great diligence, sought out and sounded the west shore, and found out a
fair harbour for the ship and barques to ride in, and named it after our
master's mate, Jackman's Sound, and brought the ship, barques, and all
their company to safe anchor, except one man which died by God's
visitation.

At our first arrival, after the ship rode at anchor, general, with such
company as could well be spared from the ships, in marching order entered
the land, having special care by exhortations that at our entrance
thereinto we should all with one voice, kneeling upon our knees, chiefly
thank God for our safe arrival; secondly, beseech Him that it would
please His Divine Majesty long to continue our Queen, for whom he, and
all the rest of our company, in this order took possession of the
country; and thirdly, that by our Christian study and endeavour, those
barbarous people, trained up in paganry and infidelity, might be reduced
to the knowledge of true religion, and to the hope of salvation in Christ
our Redeemer, with other words very apt to signify his willing mind and
affection towards his prince and country, whereby all suspicion of an
undutiful subject may credibly be judged to be utterly exempted from his
mind.  All the rest of the gentlemen, and others, deserve worthily herein
their due praise and commendation.

These things in order accomplished, our general commanded all the company
to be obedient in things needful for our own safeguard to Master Fenton,
Master Yorke, and Master Beast, his lieutenant, while he was occupied in
other necessary affairs concerning our coming thither.

After this order we marched through the country, with ensign displayed,
so far as was thought needful, and now and then heaped up stones on high
mountains and other places, in token of possession, as likewise to
signify unto such as hereafter may chance to arrive there that possession
is taken in the behalf of some other prince by those which first found
out the country.

Whose maketh navigation to these countries hath not only extreme winds
and furious seas to encounter withal, but also many monstrous and great
islands of ice: a thing both rare, wonderful, and greatly to be regarded.

We were forced sundry times, while the ship did ride here at anchor, to
have continual watch, with boats and men ready with hawsers, to knit fast
unto such ice which with the ebb and flood were tossed to and fro in the
harbour, and with force of oars to hail them away, for endangering the
ship.

Our general certain days searched this supposed continent with America,
and not finding the commodity to answer his expectations, after he had
made trial thereof, he departed thence, with two little barques, and men
sufficient, to the east shore, being he supposed continent of Asia, and
left the ship, with most of the gentlemen soldiers and sailors, until
such time as he either thought good to send or come for them.

The stones on this supposed continent with America be altogether sparkled
and glister in the sun like gold; so likewise doth the sand in the bright
water, yet they verify the old proverb, "All is not gold that
glistereth."

On this west shore we found a dead fish floating, which had in his nose a
horn, straight and torquet, of length two yards lacking two inches, being
broken in the top, where we might perceive it hollow, into which some of
our sailors putting spiders they presently died.  I saw not the trial
hereof, but it was reported unto me of a truth, by the virtue whereof we
supposed it to be the sea unicorn.

After our general had found out good harbour for the ship and barques to
anchor in, and also such store of gold ore as he thought himself
satisfied withal, he returned to the _Michael_, whereof Master Yorke
aforesaid was captain, accompanied with our master and his mate, who
coasting along the west shore, not far from whence the ship rode, they
perceived a fair harbour, and willing to sound the same, at the entrance
thereof they espied two tents of seal skins, unto which the captain, our
said master, and other company resorted.  At the sight of our men the
people fled into the mountains; nevertheless, they went to their tents,
where, leaving certain trifles of ours as glasses, bells, knives, and
such like things, they departed, not taking anything of theirs except one
dog.  They did in like manner leave behind them a letter, pen, ink, and
paper, whereby our men whom the captain lost the year before, and in that
people's custody, might (if any of them were alive) be advertised of our
presence and being there.

On the same day, after consultation, all the gentlemen, and others
likewise that could be spared from the ship, under the conduct and
leading of Master Philpot (unto whom, in our general's absence, and his
lieutenant, Master Beast, all the rest were obedient), went ashore,
determining to see if by fair means we could either allure them to
familiarity, or otherwise take some of them, and so attain to some
knowledge of those men whom our general lost the year before.

At our coming back again to the place where their tents were before, they
had removed their tents farther into the said bay or sound, where they
might, if they were driven from the land, flee with their boats into the
sea.  We, parting ourselves into two companies, and compassing a
mountain, came suddenly upon them by land, who, espying us, without any
tarrying fled to their boats, leaving the most part of their oars behind
them for haste, and rowed down the bay, where our two pinnaces met them
and drove them to shore.  But if they had had all their oars, so swift
are they in rowing, it had been lost time to have chased them.

When they were landed they fiercely assaulted our men with their bows and
arrows, who wounded three of them with our arrows, and perceiving
themselves thus hurt they desperately leaped off the rocks into the sea
and drowned themselves; which if they had not done but had submitted
themselves, or if by any means we could have taken alive (being their
enemies as they judged), we would both have saved them, and also have
sought remedy to cure their wounds received at our hands.  But they,
altogether void of humanity, and ignorant what mercy meaneth, in
extremities look for no other than death, and perceiving that they should
fall into our hands, thus miserably by drowning rather desired death than
otherwise to be saved by us.  The rest, perceiving their fellows in this
distress, fled into the high mountains.  Two women, not being so apt to
escape as the men were, the one for her age, and the other being
encumbered with a young child, we took.  The old wretch, whom divers of
our sailors supposed to be either a devil or a witch, had her buskins
plucked off to see if she were cloven-footed, and for her ugly hue and
deformity we let her go; the young woman and the child we brought away.
We named the place where they were slain Bloody Point, and the bay or
harbour Yorke's Sound, after the name of one of the captains of the two
barques.

Having this knowledge both of their fierceness and cruelty, and
perceiving that fair means as yet is not able to allure them to
familiarity, we disposed ourselves, contrary to our inclination,
something to be cruel, returned to their tents, and made a spoil of the
same, where we found an old shirt, a doublet, a girdle, and also shoes of
our men, whom we lost the year before; on nothing else unto them
belonging could we set our eyes.

Their riches are not gold, silver, or precious drapery, but their said
tents and boats made of the skins of red deer and seal skins, also dogs
like unto wolves, but for the most part black, with other trifles, more
to be wondered at for their strangeness than for any other commodity
needful for our use.

Thus returning to our ship the 3rd of August, we departed from the west
shore, supposed firm with America, after we had anchored there thirteen
days, and so the 4th thereof we came to our general on the east shore,
and anchored in a fair harbour named Anne Warwick's Sound, and to which
is annexed an island, both named after the Countess of Warwick--Anne
Warwick's Sound and Isle.

In this isle our general thought good for this voyage to freight both the
ships and barques with such stone or gold mineral as he judged to
countervail the charges of his first and this his second navigation to
these countries, with sufficient interest to the venturers whereby they
might both be satisfied for this time and also in time to come (if it
please God and our prince) to expect a much more benefit out of the
bowels of those septentrional parallels, which long time hath concealed
itself till at this present, through the wonderful diligence and great
danger of our general and others, God is contented with the revealing
thereof.  It riseth so abundantly, that from the beginning of August to
the 22nd thereof (every man following the diligence of our general) we
raised above ground 200 ton, which we judged a reasonable freight for the
ship and two barques in the said Anne Warwick's Isle.

In the meantime of our abode here some of the country people came to show
themselves unto us sundry times from the main shore, near adjacent to the
said isle.  Our general, desirous to have some news of his men whom he
lost the year before, with some company with him repaired with the ship
boat to commune or sign with them for familiarity, whereunto he is
persuaded to bring them.  They at the first show made tokens that three
of his five men were alive, and desired pen, ink, and paper, and that
within three or four days they would return, and, as we judged, bring
those of our men which were living with them.

They also made signs or tokens of their king, whom they called Cacough,
and how he was carried on men's shoulders, and a man far surmounting any
of our company in bigness and stature.

With these tokens and signs of writing, pen, ink, and paper were
delivered them, which they would not take at our hands, but being laid
upon the shore, and the party gone away, they took up; which likewise
they do when they desire anything for change of theirs, laying for that
which is left so much as they think will countervail the same, and not
coming near together.  It seemeth they have been used to this trade or
traffic with some other people adjoining, or not far distant from their
country.

After four days some of them showed themselves upon the firm land, but
not where they were before.  Our general, very glad thereof, supposing to
hear of our men, went from the island with the boat and sufficient
company with him.  They seemed very glad, and allured him about a certain
point of the land, behind which they might perceive a company of the
crafty villains to lie lurking, whom our general would not deal withal,
for that he knew not what company they were, so with few signs dismissed
them and returned to his company.

Another time, as our said general was coasting the country with two
little pinnaces, whereby at our return he might make the better relation
thereof, three of the crafty villains with a white skin allured us to
them.  Once again our general, for that he hoped to hear of his men, went
towards them; at our coming near the shore whereon they were we might
perceive a number of them lie hidden behind great stones, and those three
in sight labouring by all means possible that some would come on land;
and perceiving we made no haste, by words nor friendly signs, which they
used by clapping their hands, and being without weapon, and but three in
sight, they sought further means to provoke us thereunto.  One alone laid
flesh on the shore, which we took up with the boat-hook as necessary
victuals for the relieving of the man, woman, and child whom we had
taken, for that as yet they could not digest our meat; whereby they
perceived themselves deceived of their expectation for all their crafty
allurements.  Yet once again to make, as it were, a full show of their
crafty natures and subtle sleights, to the intent thereby to have
entrapped and taken some of our men, one of them counterfeited himself
impotent and lame of his legs, who seemed to descend to the water's side
with great difficulty, and to cover his craft the more one of his fellows
came down with him, and in such places where he seemed unable to pass, he
took him on his shoulders, set him by the water's side, and departed from
him, leaving him, as it should seem, all alone; who, playing his
counterfeit pageant very well, thought thereby to provoke some of us to
come on shore, not fearing but that one of us might make our party good
with a lame man.

Our general, having compassion of his impotency, thought good, if it were
possible, to cure him thereof; wherefore he caused a soldier to shoot at
him with his calever, which grazed before his face.  The counterfeit
villain deliverly fled without any impediment at all, and got him to his
bow and arrows, and the rest from their lurking holes with their weapons,
bows, arrows, slings, and darts.  Our general caused some calevers to be
shot off at them, whereby, some being hurt, they might hereafter stand in
more fear of us.

This was all the answer for this time we could have of our men, or of our
general's letter.  Their crafty dealing at these three several times
being thus manifest unto us, may plainly show their disposition in other
things to be correspondent.  We judged that they used these stratagems
thereby to have caught some of us for the delivering of the man, woman,
and child, whom we had taken.

They are men of a large corporature, and good proportion; their colour is
not much unlike the sunburnt countryman, who laboureth daily in sun for
his living.

They wear their hair something long, and cut before either with stone or
knife, very disorderly.  Their women wear their hair long, knit up with
two loops, showing forth on either side of their faces, and the rest
faltered upon a knot.  Also, some of their women tint their faces
proportionally, as chin, cheeks, and forehead and the wrists of their
hands, whereupon they lay a colour which continueth dark azurine.

They eat their meat all raw, both flesh, fish, and fowl, or something
parboiled with blood, and a little water, which they drink.  For lack of
water, they will eat ice that is hard frozen as pleasantly as we will do
sugar-candy, or other sugar.

If they, for necessity's sake, stand in need of the premises, such grass
as the country yieldeth they pluck up and eat, not daintily, or
saladwise, to allure their stomachs to appetite, but for necessity's
sake, without either salt, oils, or washing, like brute beasts devouring
the same.  They neither use table, stool, or table-cloth for comeliness:
but when they are imbrued with blood, knuckle deep, and their knives in
like sort, they use their tongues as apt instruments to lick them clean;
in doing whereof they are assured to lose none of their victuals.

They keep certain dogs, not much unlike wolves, which they yoke together,
as we do oxen and horses, to a sled or trail, and so carry their
necessaries over the ice and snow, from place to place, as the captain,
whom we have, made perfect signs.  And when those dogs are not apt for
the same use, or when with hunger they are constrained for lack of other
victuals, they eat them, so that they are as needful for them, in respect
of their bigness, as our oxen are for us.

They apparel themselves in the skins of such beasts as they kill, sewed
together with the sinews of them.  All the fowl which they kill they
skin, and make thereof one kind of garment or other to defend them from
the cold.

They make their apparel with hoods and tails, which tails they give, when
they think to gratify any friendship shown unto them; a great sign of
friendship with them.  The men have them not so syde as the women.

The men and women wear their hose close to their legs, from the waist to
the knee, without any open before, as well the one kind as the other.
Upon their legs they wear hose of leather, with the fur side inward, two
or three pair on at once, and especially the women.  In those hose they
put their knives, needles, and other things needful to bear about.  They
put a bone within their hose, which reacheth from the foot to the knee,
whereupon they draw their said hose, and so in place of garters they are
holden from falling down about their feet.

They dress their skins very soft and supple with the hair on.  In cold
weather or winter they wear the fur side inward, and in summer outward.
Other apparel they have none but the said skins.

Those beasts, fishes, and fowls which they kill are their meat, drink,
apparel, houses, bedding, hose, shoes, thread, and sails for their boats,
with many other necessaries, whereof they stand in need, and almost all
their riches.

The houses are tents made of seal skins, pitched up with four fir
quarters, four-square, meeting at the top, and the skins sewed together
with sinews, and laid thereupon; they are so pitched up, that the
entrance into them is always south, or against the sun.

They have other sort of houses, which we found not to be inhabited, which
are raised with stones and whalebones, and a skin laid over them to
withstand the rain, or other weather; the entrance of them being not much
unlike an oven's mouth, whereunto, I think, they resort for a time to
fish, hunt, and fowl, and so leave them until the next time they come
thither again.

Their weapons are bows, arrows, darts, and slings.  Their bows are of
wood, of a yard long, sinewed on the back with firm sinews, not glued to,
but fast girded and tied on.  Their bow strings are likewise sinews.
Their arrows are three pieces, nocked with bone and ended with bone; with
those two ends, and the wood in the midst, they pass not in length half a
yard, or little more.  They are feathered with two feathers, the pen end
being cut away, and the feathers laid upon the arrow with the broad side
to the wood, insomuch, that they seem, when they are tied on, to have
four feathers.  They have likewise three sorts of heads to those arrows;
one sort of stone or iron, proportioned like to a heart; the second sort
of bone much like unto a stopt head, with a hook on the same, the third
sort of bone likewise, made sharp at both sides, and sharp pointed.  They
are not made very fast, but lightly tied to, or else set in a nocke,
that, upon small occasion, the arrow leaveth these heads behind them;
they are of small force except they be very near when they shoot.

Their darts are made of two sorts: the one with many forks of bones in
the fore end, and likewise in the midst; their proportions are not much
unlike our toasting-irons, but longer; these they cast out of an
instrument of wood very readily.  The other sort is greater than the
first aforesaid, with a long bone made sharp on both sides, not much
unlike a rapier, which I take to be their most hurtful weapon.

They have two sorts of boats made of leather, set out on the inner side
with quarters of wood, artificially tied together with thongs of the
same; the greater sort are not much unlike our wherries, wherein sixteen
or twenty men may sit; they have for a sail dressed the guts of such
beasts as they kill, very fine and thin, which they sew together; the
other boat is but for one man to sit and row in, with one oar.

Their order of fishing, hunting, and fowling, are with these said
weapons; but in what sort or how they use them we have no perfect
knowledge as yet.

I can suppose their abode or habitation not to be here, for that neither
their houses nor apparel are of such force to withstand the extremity of
cold that the country seemeth to be infected withal; neither do I see any
sign likely to perform the same.

Those houses, or rather dens, which stand there, have no sign of footway,
or anything else trodden, which is one of the chiefest tokens of
habitation.  And those tents, which they bring with them, when they have
sufficiently hunted and fished, they remove to other places; and when
they have sufficiently stored them of such victuals as the country
yieldeth, or bringeth forth, they return to their winter stations or
habitations.  This conjecture do I make for the infertility which I
perceive to be in that country.

They have some iron, whereof they make arrow-heads, knives, and other
little instruments, to work their boats, bows, arrows, and darts withal,
which are very unapt to do anything withal, but with great labour.

It seemeth that they have conversation with some other people, of whom
for exchange they should receive the same.  They are greatly delighted
with anything that is bright or giveth a sound.

What knowledge they have of God, or what idol they adore, we have no
perfect intelligence.  I think them rather _anthropophagi_, or devourers
of man's flesh, than otherwise; that there is no flesh or fish which they
find dead (smell it never so filthily), but they will eat it as they find
it without any other dressing.  A loathsome thing, either to the
beholders or the hearers.  There is no manner of creeping beast hurtful,
except some spiders (which as many affirm are signs of great store of
gold), and also certain stinging gnats, which bite so fiercely that the
place where they bite shortly after swelleth, and itcheth very sore.

They make signs of certain people that wear bright plates of gold in
their foreheads and other places of their bodies.

The countries on both sides the straits lie very high, with rough stony
mountains, and great quantity of snow thereon.  There is very little
plain ground, and no grass except a little, which is much like unto moss
that groweth on soft ground, such as we get turfs in.  There is no wood
at all.  To be brief, there is nothing fit or profitable for the use of
man which that country with root yieldeth or bringeth forth; howbeit
there is great quantity of deer, whose skins are like unto asses, their
heads or horns do far exceed, as well in length as also in breadth, any
in these our parts or countries: their feet likewise are as great as our
oxen's, which we measure to be seven or eight inches in breadth.  There
are also hares, wolves, fishing bears, and sea-fowl of sundry sorts.

As the country is barren and unfertile, so are they rude, and of no
capacity to culture the same to any perfection; but are contented by
their hunting, fishing, and fowling, with raw flesh and warm blood, to
satisfy their greedy paunches, which is their only glory.

There is great likelihood of earthquakes or thunder, for there are huge
and monstrous mountains, whose greatest substance are stones, and those
stones so shapen with some extraordinary means, that one is separated
from another, which is discordant from all other quarries.

There are no rivers or running springs, but such as through the heat of
the sun, with such water as descendeth from the mountains and hills,
whereon great drifts of snow do lie, are engendered.

It argueth also that there should be none; for that the earth, which with
the extremity of the winter is so frozen within, that that water which
should have recourse within the same to maintain springs hath not his
motion, whereof great waters have their origin, as by experience is seen
otherwhere.  Such valleys as are capable to receive the water, that in
the summer time, by the operation of the sun, descendeth from great
abundance of snow, which continually lieth on the mountains, and hath no
passage, sinketh into the earth, and so vanisheth away, without any
runnel above the earth, by which occasion or continual standing of the
said water the earth is opened and the great frost yieldeth to the force
thereof, which in other places, four or five fathoms within the ground,
for lack of the said moisture, the earth even in the very summer time is
frozen, and so combineth the stones together, that scarcely instruments
with great force can unknit them.

Also, where the water in those valleys can have no such passage away, by
the continuance of time in such order as is before rehearsed, the yearly
descent from the mountains filleth them full, that at the lowest bank of
the same they fall into the next valley, and so continue as fishing
ponds, in summer time full of water, and in the winter hard frozen, as by
scars that remain thereof in summer may easily be perceived; so that the
heat of summer is nothing comparable or of force to dissolve the
extremity of cold that cometh in winter.

Nevertheless, I am assured, that below the force of the frost, within the
earth, the waters have recourse, and empty themselves out of sight into
the sea, which, through the extremity of the frost, are constrained to do
the same; by which occasion, the earth within is kept the warmer, and
springs have their recourse, which is the only nutriment of gold and
minerals within the same.

There is much to be said of the commodities of these countries, which are
couched within the bowels of the earth, which I let pass till more
perfect trial be made thereof.

Thus conjecturing, till time, with the earnest industry of our general
and others (who, by all diligence, remain pressed to explore the truth of
that which is unexplored, as he hath to his everlasting praise found out
that which is like to yield an innumerable benefit to his prince and
country), offer further trial, I conclude.

The 23rd August, after we had satisfied our minds with freight sufficient
for our vessels, though not our covetous desires, with such knowledge of
the country, people, and other commodities as are before rehearsed, the
24th thereof we departed there hence: the 17th of September we fell with
the Land's End of England, and so to Milford Haven, from whence our
general rowed to the court for order to what port or haven to conduct the
ship.

We lost our two barques in the way homeward, the one the 29th of August,
the other the 31st of the same month, by occasion of great tempest and
fog; howbeit, God restored the one to Bristol, and the other making his
course by Scotland to Yarmouth.  In this voyage we lost two men, one in
the way by God's visitation, and the other homeward, cast overboard with
a surge of the sea.

I could declare unto the readers the latitude and longitude of such
places and regions as we have been at, but not altogether so perfectly as
our masters and others, with many circumstances of tempests and other
accidents incident to seafaring men, which seem not altogether strange,
but I let them pass to their reports as men most apt to set forth and
declare the same.  I have also left the names of the countries on both
the shores untouched for lack of understanding the people's language, as
also for sundry respects not needful as yet to be declared.

Countries new explored, where commodity is to be looked for, do better
accord with a new name given by the explorers than an uncertain name by a
doubtful author.

Our general named sundry islands, mountains, capes, and harbours after
the names of divers noblemen, and other gentlemen his friends, as well on
the one shore as also on the other.




THE THIRD AND LAST VOYAGE INTO META INCOGNITA,


_Made by Master Martin Frobisher_, _in the year_ 1578, _written by Thomas
Ellis_.

These are to let you know, that upon the 25th May, the _Thomas Allen_,
being vice-admiral, whose captain was Master Yorke; Master Gibbes,
master; Master Christopher Hall, pilot, accompanied with the
rear-admiral, named the _Hopewell_, whose captain was Master Henry Carew,
the Master Andrew Dier, and certain other ships, came to Gravesend, where
we anchored, and abode the coming of certain other of our fleet, which
were not yet come.

The 27th of the same month, our fleet being now come together, and all
things pressed in a readiness, the wind favouring and tide serving, we
being of sails in number eight, weighed anchors, and hoisted our sails
towards Harwich, to meet with our admiral and the residue, which then and
there abode our arrival, where we safely arrived the 28th thereof;
finding there our admiral, whom we, with the discharge of certain pieces,
saluted (according to order and duty), and were welcomed with the like
courtesy, which being finished we landed, where our general continued
mustering his soldiers and miners, and setting things in order
appertaining to the voyage, until the last of the said month of May,
which day we hoisted our sails, and committing ourselves to the
conducting of Almighty God, we set forward toward the West Country, in
such lucky wise and good success, that by the 5th June we passed the
Dursies, being the utmost part of Ireland, to the westward.

And here it were not much amiss, nor far from our purpose, if I should a
little discourse and speak of our adventures and chances by the way, as
our landing at Plymouth, as also the meeting of certain poor men, which
were robbed and spoiled of all that they had by pirates and rovers;
amongst whom was a man of Bristol, on whom our general used his
liberality, and sent him away with letters into England.

But because such things are impertinent to the matter, I will return
(without any more mentioning of the same) to that from which I have
digressed and swerved, I mean our ships, now sailing on the surging seas,
sometimes passing at pleasure with a wished eastern wind, sometimes
hindered of our course again by the western blasts, until the 20th day of
the foresaid month of June, on which day in the morning we fell in with
Friesland, which is a very high and cragged land, and was almost clean
covered with snow, so that we might see nought but craggy rocks and the
tops of high and huge hills, sometimes (and for the most part) all
covered with foggy mists.  There might we also perceive the great isles
of ice lying on the seas like mountains, some small, some big, of sundry
kinds of shapes, and such a number of them, that we could not come near
the shore for them.

Thus sailing along the coast, at the last we saw a place somewhat void of
ice, where our general (accompanied with certain other) went ashore,
where they saw certain tents made of beasts' skins, and boats much like
unto theirs of Meta Incognita.  The tents were furnished with flesh,
fish, skins, and other trifles: amongst the which was found a box of
nails, whereby we did conjecture that they had either artificers amongst
them, or else a traffic with some other nation.  The men ran away, so
that we could have no conference or communication with them.  Our general
(because he would have them no more to flee, but rather encouraged to
stay through his courteous dealing) gave commandment that his men should
take nothing away with them, saving only a couple of white dogs, for
which he left pins, points, knives, and other trifling things, and
departed, without taking or hurting anything, and so came aboard, and
hoisted sails and passed forwards.

But being scarce out of the sight thereof, there fell such a fog and
hideous mist that we could not see one another; whereupon we struck our
drums, and sounded our trumpets to the end we might keep together; and so
continued all that day and night, till the next day, that the mist brake
up; so that we might easily perceive all the ships thus sailing together
all that day, until the next day, being the 22nd of the same, on which
day we saw an infinite number of ice, from the which we cast about to
shun the danger thereof.

But one of our small barques named the _Michael_, whose captain was
Master Kinderslie, the master, Bartholomew Bull, lost our company,
insomuch that we could not obtain the sight of her many days after, of
whom I mean to speak further anon, when occasion shall be ministered, and
opportunity served.  Thus we continued on our course until the 2nd of
July, on which day we fell with the Queen's Foreland, where we saw so
much ice, that we thought it impossible to get into the straits, yet at
the last we gave the adventure, and entered the ice.

Being in amongst it, we saw the _Michael_, of whom I spake before,
accompanied with the, _Judith_, whose captain was Master Fenton, the
master, Charles Jackman, bearing into the aforesaid ice, far distant from
us, who in a storm that fell that present night (whereof I will at large,
God willing, discourse hereafter), were severed from us, and being in,
wandered up and down the straits amongst the ice, many days in great
peril, till at the last (by the providence of God) they came safely to
harbour in their wished port in the Countess of Warwick's Sound the 20th
July aforesaid, ten days before any of the other ships; who going on
shore, found where the people of the country had been, and had hid their
provision in great heaps of stone, being both of flesh and fish, which
they had killed, whereof we also found great store in other places after
our arrival.  They found also divers engines, as bows, slings, and darts.
They found likewise certain pieces of the pinnace which our general left
there the year before; which pinnace he had sunk, minding to have it
again the next year.

Now, seeing I have entreated so much of the _Judith_ and the _Michael_, I
will return to the rest of the other ships, and will speak a little of
the storm which fell, with the mishaps that we had, the night that we put
into the ice, whereof I made mention before.

At the first entry into the ice, in the mouth of the straits, our passage
was very narrow and difficult; but being once gotten in, we had a fair,
open place without any ice for the most part; being a league in compass,
the ice being round about us, and enclosing us, as it were, within the
pales of a park.  In which place (because it was almost night) we minded
to take in our sails and lie a hull all that night.  But the storm so
increased, and the waves began to mount aloft, which brought the ice so
near us, and coming in so fast upon us, that we were fain to bear in and
out, where ye might espy an open place.  Thus the ice coming on us so
fast we were in great danger, looking every hour for death, and thus
passed we on in that great danger, seeing both ourselves and the rest of
our ships so troubled and tossed amongst the ice, that it would make the
strongest-heart to relent.

At the last, the barque _Dionyse_, being but a weak ship, and bruised
afore amongst the ice, being so leak that she no longer could carry above
water, sank without saving any of the goods which were in her: the sight
so abashed the whole fleet, that we thought verily we should have tasted
of the same sauce.  But nevertheless, we seeing them in such danger,
manned our boats, and saved all the men, in such wise that not one
perished.  (God be thanked.)

The storm still increased and the ice enclosed us, that we were fain to
take down top and topmasts; for the ice had so environed us, that we
could see neither land nor sea as far as we could ken; so that we were
fain to cut our cables to hang overboard for fenders, somewhat to ease
the ship's sides from the great and dreary strokes of the ice; some with
capstan bars, some fending off with oars, some with planks of two inches
thick, which were broken immediately with the force of the ice, some
going out upon the ice, to bear it off with their shoulders from the
ships.  But the rigorousness of the tempest was such, and the force of
the ice so great, that not only they burst and spoiled the foresaid
provision, but likewise so raised the sides of the ships that it was
pitiful to behold, and caused the hearts of many to faint.

Thus continued we all that dismal and lamentable night, plunged in this
perplexity, looking for instant death; but our God (who never leaveth
them destitute which faithfully call upon Him), although He often
punisheth for amendment's sake, in the morning caused the winds to cease,
and the fog, which all that night lay on the face of the water, to clear,
so that we might perceive about a mile from us a certain place clear from
any ice, to the which with an easy breath of wind, which our God sent us,
we bent ourselves, and furthermore He provided better for us than we
deserved, or hoped for; for when we were in the foresaid clear place, He
sent us a fresh gale at west, or at west-south-west, which set us clear
without all the ice.  And further He added more, for He sent us so
pleasant a day, as the like we had not of a long time before, as after
punishment consolation.

Thus we joyful whites, being at liberty, took in all our sails, and lay a
hull, praising God for our deliverance, and stayed to gather together our
fleet; which once being done, we seeing that none of them had any great
hurt, neither any of them wanted, saving only they of whom I spake
before, and the ship which was lost, then at the last we hoisted our
sails, and lay bulting off and on, till such time as it would please God
to take away the ice, that we might get into the straits.

As we thus lay off and on, we came by a marvellous huge mountain of ice,
which surpassed all the rest that ever we saw, for we judged it to be
near four score fathoms above water, and we thought it to be aground for
anything that we could perceive, being there nine score fathoms deep, and
of compass about half a mile.

Also the fifth of July there fell a hideous fog and mist, that continued
till the nineteenth of the same, so that one ship could not see another.
Therefore we were fain to bear a small sail, and to observe the time, but
there ran such a current of tide, that it set us to the north-west of the
Queen's Forehand, the back side of all the straits, where (through the
contagious fog having no sight either of sun or star) we scarce knew
where we were.  In this fog the 10th July we lost the company of the
_Vice-Admiral_, the _Anne Francis_, the _Busse of Bridgewater_, and the
_Francis of Foy_.

The sixteenth day, one of our small barques, named the _Gabriel_, was
sent by our general to bear in with the land, to descry it, where, being
on land, they met with the people of the country, which seemed very
humane and civilised, and offered to traffic with our men, proffering
them fowls and skins for knives and other trifles, whose courtesy caused
us to think that they had small conversation with the other of the
straits.  Then we bare back again, to go with the Queen's Forehand, and
the 18th day we came by two islands, whereon we went on shore, and found
where the people had been, but we saw none of them.  This day we were
again in the ice, and like to be in as great peril as we were at the
first.  For through the darkness and obscurity of the foggy mist we were
almost run on rocks and islands before we saw them: but God (even
miraculously) provided for us, opening the fogs that we might see
clearly, both where and in what danger we presently were, and also the
way to escape; or else, without fail we had ruinously run upon the rocks.

When we knew perfectly our instant case, we cast about to get again on
sea board, which (God be thanked) by might we obtained, and praised God.
The clear continued scarce an hour, but the fog fell again as thick as
ever it was.

Then the _Rear-Admiral_ and the _Bear_ got themselves clear without
danger of ice and rocks, struck their sails and lay a hull, staying to
have the rest of the fleet come forth, which as yet had not found the
right way to clear themselves from the danger of rocks and ice, until the
next morning, at what time the _Rear-Admiral_ discharged certain warning
pieces, to give notice that she had escaped, and that the rest (by
following of her) might set themselves free, which they did that day.
Then having gathered ourselves together, we proceeded on our purposed
voyage, bearing off, and keeping ourselves distant from the coast, until
the 19th day of July, at which time the fogs brake up and dispersed, so
that we might plainly and clearly behold the pleasant air which had so
long been taken from us by the obscurity of the foggy mists; and, after
that time, we were not much encumbered therewith until we had left the
confines of the country.

Then we, espying a fair sound, supposed it to go into the straits,
between the Queen's Foreland and Jackman's Sound, which proved as we
imagined.  For our general sent forth again the _Gabriel_ to discover it,
who passed through with much difficulty, for there ran such an extreme
current of a tide, with so horrible a gulf, that with a fresh gale of
wind they were scarce able to stem it, yet at the length with great
travel they passed it, and came to the straits, where they met with the
_Thomas Allen_, the _Thomas of Ipswich_, and the _Busse of Bridgewater_,
who all together adventured to bear into the ice again, to see if they
could obtain their wished port.  But they were so encumbered, that with
much difficulty they were able to get out again, yet at the last they
escaping the _Thomas Allen_ and the _Gabriel_, bear in with the western
shore, where they found harbour, and they moored their ships until the
4th of August, at which time they came to us, in the Countess of
Warwick's Sound.  The _Thomas of Ipswich_ caught a great leak, which
caused her to cast again to sea board, and so was mended.

We sailed along still by the coast until we came to the Queen's Forehand,
at the point whereof we met with part of the gulf aforesaid, which place
or gulf (as some of our masters do credibly report) doth flow nine hours
and ebbs but three.  At that point we discovered certain lands southward,
which neither time nor opportunity would serve to search.  Then being
come to the mouth of the straits, we met with the _Anne Francis_, who had
lain bulting up and down ever since her departure alone, never finding
any of her company.  We met then also the _Francis of Foy_, with whom
again we intended to venture and get in, but the ice was yet so thick,
that we were compelled again to retire and get us on sea board.

There fell also the same day, being the 26th July, such a horrible snow,
that it lay a foot thick upon the hatches, which froze as fast as it
fell.

We had also at other times divers cruel storms, both snow and hail, which
manifestly declared the distemperature of the country: yet for all that
we were so many times repulsed and put back from our purpose, knowing
that lingering delay was not profitable for us, but hurtful to our
voyage, we mutually consented to our valiant general once again to give
the onset.

The 28th day, therefore, of the same July we assayed, and with little
trouble (God be praised) we passed the dangers by daylight.  Then night
falling on the face of the earth, we hulled in the clear, till the
cheerful light of the day had chased away the noisome darkness of the
night, at which the we set forward toward our wished port; by the 30th
day we obtained our expected desire, where we found the _Judith_ and the
_Michael_, which brought no small joy unto the general, and great
consolation to the heavy hearts of those wearied wights.

The 30th day of July we brought our ships into the Countess of Warwick's
Sound, and moored them, namely these ships, the _Admiral_, the
_Rear-Admiral_, the _Francis of Foy_, the _Bear_, _Armenel_, the
_Salomon_, and the _Busse of Bridgewater_, which being done, our general
commanded us all to come ashore upon the Countess Island, where he set
his miners to work upon the mine, giving charge with expedition to
despatch with their lading.

Our general himself, accompanied with his gentleman, divers times made
roads into sundry parts of the country, as well to find new mines as also
to find out and see the people of the country.  He found out one mine,
upon an island by Bear's Sound, and named it the Countess of Sussex
Island.  One other was found in Winter's Fornace, with divers others, to
which the ships were sent sunderly to be laden.  In the same roads he met
with divers of the people of the country at sundry times, as once at a
place called David's Sound, who shot at our men, and very desperately
gave them the onset, being not above three or four in number, there being
of our countrymen above a dozen; but seeing themselves not able to
prevail, they took themselves to flight, whom our men pursued, but being
not used to such craggy cliffs, they soon lost the sight of them, and so
in vain returned.

We also saw them at Bear's Sound, both by sea and land, in great
companies; but they would at all times keep the water between them and
us.  And if any of our ships chanced to be in the sound (as they came
divers times), because the harbour was not very good, the ship laded, and
departed again; then so long as any ships were in sight, the people would
not be seen.  But when as they perceived the ships to be gone, they would
not only show themselves standing upon high cliffs, and call us to come
over unto them, but also would come in their boats very near to us, as it
were to brag at us; whereof our general, having advertisement, sent for
the captain and gentlemen of the ships to accompany and attend upon him,
with the captain also of the _Anne Francis_, who was but the night before
come unto us.  For they and the fleet-boat, having lost us the 26th day,
in the great snow, put into a harbour in the Queen's Forehand, where they
found good ore, wherewith they laded themselves, and came to seek the
general; so that now we had all our ships, saving one barque, which was
lost, and the _Thomas of Ipswich_ who (compelled by what fury I know not)
forsook our company, and returned home without lading.

Our general, accompanied with his gentlemen (of whom I spake), came
altogether to the Countess of Sussex Island, near to Bear's Sound, where
he manned out certain pinnaces and went over to the people, who,
perceiving his arrival, fled away with all speed, and in haste left
certain darts and other engines behind them which we found, but the
people we could not find.

The next morning our general, perceiving certain of them in boat upon the
sea, gave chase to them in a pinnace under sail, with a fresh gale of
wind, but could by no means come near unto them, for the longer he sailed
the farther off he was from them, which well showed their cunning and
activity.  Thus time wearing away, and the day of our departure
approaching, our general commanded to lade with all expedition, that we
might be again on sea board with our ship; for whilst we were in the
country we were in continual danger of freezing in, for often snow and
hail, often the water was so much frozen and congealed in the night, that
in the morning we could scarce row our boats or pinnaces, especially in
Dier's Sound, which is a calm and still water, which caused our general
to make the more haste, so that by the 30th day of August we were all
laden, and made all things ready to depart.  But before I proceed any
further herein, to show what fortune befell at our departure, I will turn
my pen a little to Master Captain Fenton, and those gentlemen which
should have inhabited all the year in those countries, whose valiant
minds were much to be commended, that neither fear of force, nor the
cruel nipping storms of the raging winter, neither the intemperature of
so unhealthful a country, neither the savageness of the people, neither
the sight and show of such and so many strange meteors, neither the
desire to return to their native soil, neither regard of friends, neither
care of possessions and inheritances, finally, not the love of life (a
thing of all other most sweet), neither the terror of dreadful death
itself, might seem to be of sufficient force to withdraw their prowess,
or to restrain from that purpose, thereby to have profited their country;
but that with most willing hearts, venturous minds, stout stomachs, and
singular manhood, they were content there to have tarried for the time,
among a barbarous and uncivilised people, infidels and miscreants, to
have made their dwelling, not terrified with the manifold and imminent
dangers which they were like to run into; and seeing before their eyes so
many casualties, whereto their life was subject, the least whereof would
have made a milksop Thersites astonished and utterly discomfited; being,
I say, thus minded and purposed, they deserved special commendation, for,
doubtless, they had done as they intended, if luck had not withstood
their willingness, and if that fortune had not so frowned upon their
intents.

For the bark _Dionyse_, which was lost, had in her much of their house,
which was prepared and should have been builded for them, with many other
implements.  Also the _Thomas of Ipswich_, which had most of their
provision in her, came not into the straits at all, neither did we see
her since the day we were separated in the great snow (of which I spake
before).  For these causes, having not their house nor yet provision,
they were disappointed of their pretence to tarry, and therefore laded
their ships and so came away with us.

But before we took shipping, we builded a little house in the Countess of
Warwick's Island, and garnished it with many kinds of trifles, as pins,
points, laces, glasses, combs, babes on horseback and on foot, with
innumerable other such fancies and toys, thereby to allure and entice the
people to some familiarity against other years.

Thus having finished all things we departed the country (as I said
before); but because the _Busse_ had not lading enough in her, she put
into Bear's Sound to take a little more.  In the meanwhile, the
_Admiral_, and the rest without the sea, stayed for her.  And that night
fell such an outrageous tempest, beating on our ships with such vehement
rigour that anchor and cable availed nought, for we were driven on rocks
and islands of ice, insomuch that had not the great goodness of God been
miraculously showed to us, we had been cast away every man.  This danger
was more doubtful and terrible than any that preceded or went before, for
there was not any one ship (I think) that escaped without damage.  Some
lost anchor, and also gables, some boats, some pinnaces, some anchor,
gables, boats, and pinnaces.

This boisterous storm so severed us one from another, that one ship knew
not what was become of another.  The _Admiral_ knew not where to find the
_Vice-Admiral_ or _Rear-Admiral_, or any other ship of our company.  Our
general, being on land in Bear's Sound, could not come to his ship, but
was compelled to go aboard the _Gabriel_, where he continued all the way
homewards, for the boisterous blasts continued so extremely, and so long
a time, that it sent us homeward (which was God's favour towards us),
will we, nill we, in such haste, as not any one of us were able to keep
in company of other, but were separated.  And if by chance any one ship
did overtake other by swiftness of sail, or met (as they often did), yet
was the rigour of the wind so hideous, that they could not continue
company together the space of one whole night.

Thus our journey outward was not so pleasant, but our coming thither,
entering the coasts and country by narrow straits, perilous ice, and
swift tides, our times of abode there in snow and storms, and our
departure from thence, the 3rd of August, with dangerous blustering winds
and tempest's, which that night arose, was as uncomfortable, separating
us so, as we sailed, that not any of us met together until the 28th of
September, which day we fell on the English coasts, between Scilly and
the Land's End, and passed the Channel, until our arrival in the river
Thames.




THE REPORT OF THOMAS WIARS,


_Passenger in the_ "_Emmanuel_," _otherwise called the_ "_Busse of
Bridgewater_," _wherein James Leeche was Master_, _one of the ships in
the last voyage of Master Martin Frobisher_, 1578, _concerning the
discovery of the great island in their way homeward_, _the_ 12_th of
September_.

The _Busse of Bridgewater_ was left in Bear's Sound, at Meta Incognita,
the 2nd day of September, behind the fleet, in some distress, through
much wind riding near the lee shore, and forced there to ride it out upon
the hazard of her cables and anchors, which were all aground but two.
The 3rd of September being fair weather, and the wind north-north-west,
she set sail, and departed thence and fell with Friesland, on he 8th day
of September, at six of the clock at night, and then they set off from
the south-west point of Friesland, the wind being at east and
east-south-east; but that night the wind veered southerly, and shifted
oftentimes that night.  But on the 10th day, in the morning, the wind at
west-north-west, fair weather, they steered south-east and by south, and
continued that course until the 12th day of September, when about 11
o'clock before noon they descried a land, which was from them about five
leagues, and the southernmost part of it was south-east-by-east from
them, and the northernmost next north-north-east, or north-east.  The
master accounted that Friesland, the south-east point of it, was from him
at that instant, when he first descried this new island,
north-west-by-north fifty leagues.  They account this island to be
twenty-five leagues long, and the longest way of it south-east and
north-west.  The southern part of it is in the latitude of fifty-seven
degrees and one second part, or thereabout.  They continued in sight of
it from the twelfth day at eleven of the clock till the thirteenth day
three of the clock in the afternoon, when they left it; and the last part
they saw of it bare from them north-west-by-north.  There appeared two
harbours upon that coast, the greatest of them seven leagues to the
northwards of the southernmost point, the other but four leagues.  There
was very much ice near the same land, and also twenty or thirty leagues
from it, for they were not clear of ice till the 15th day of September,
afternoon.  They plied their voyage homeward, and fell with the west part
of Ireland, about Galway, and had first sight of it on the 25th day of
September.




THE FIRST VOYAGE OF MASTER JOHN DAVIS,


_Undertaken in June_, 1585, _for the discovery of the North-West
Passage_, _written by John James Marchant_, _servant to the Worshipful
Master William Sanderson_.

Certain honourable personages and worthy gentlemen of the Court and
country, with divers worshipful merchants of London and of the West
Countrie, moved with desire to advance God's glory, and to seek the good
of their native country, consulting together of the likelihood of the
discovery of the North-West Passage, which heretofore had been attempted,
but unhappily given over by accidents unlooked for, which turned the
enterprisers from their principal purpose, resolved, after good
deliberation, to put down their adventures, to provide for necessary
shipping, and a fit man to be chief conductor of this so hard an
enterprise.  The setting forth of this action was committed by the
adventurers especially to the care of Master William Sanderson, merchant
of London, who was so forward therein, that besides his travel, which was
not small, he became the greatest adventurer with his purse, and
commended unto the rest of the company one Master John Davis, a man very
well grounded in the principles of the art of navigation, for captain and
chief pilot of this exploit.

Thus, therefore, all things being put in a readiness, we departed from
Dartmouth the 7th of June towards the discovery of the aforesaid
North-West Passage with two barques, the one being of fifty tons, named
the _Sunshine_, of London, and the other being thirty-five tons, named
the _Moonshine_, of Dartmouth.  In the _Sunshine_ we had twenty-three
persons, whose names are these following: Master John Davis, captain;
William Eston, master; Richard Pope, master's mate; John Jane, merchant;
Henry Davie, gunner; William Crosse, boatswain; John Bagge, Walter
Arthur, Luke Adams, Robert Coxworthie, John Ellis, John Kelly, Edward
Helman, William Dicke, Andrew Maddocke, Thomas Hill, Robert Wats,
carpenter, William Russell, Christopher Gorney, boy; James Cole, Francis
Ridley, John Russel, Robert Cornish, musicians.

The _Moonshine_ had nineteen persons, William Bruton, captain; John
Ellis, master; the rest mariners.

The 7th of June the captain and the master drew out a proportion for the
continuance of our victuals.

The 8th day, the wind being at south-west and west-south-west, we put in
for Falmouth, where we remained until the 13th.

The 13th the wind blew at north, and being fair weather we departed.

The 14th, with contrary wind, we were forced to put into Scilly.

The 15th we departed thence, having the wind north and by east, moderate
and fair weather.

The 16th we were driven back again, and were constrained to arrive at New
Grimsby, at Scilly; here the wind remained contrary twelve days, and in
that space the captain, the master, and I went about all the islands, and
the captain did plan out and describe the situation of all the islands,
rocks, and harbours to the exact use of navigation, with lines and scale
thereunto convenient.

The 28th, in God's name, we departed, the wind being easterly, but calm.

The 29th very foggy.

The 30th foggy.

The 1st of July we saw great store of porpoises, the master called for a
harping-iron, and shot twice or thrice; sometimes he missed, and at last
shot one and struck him in the side, and wound him into the ship; when we
had him aboard, the master said it was a darley head.

The 2nd we had some of the fish boiled, and it did eat as sweet as any
mutton.

The 3rd we had more in sight, and the master went to shoot at them, but
they were so great, that they burst our irons, and we lost both fish,
irons, pastime, and all; yet, nevertheless, the master shot at them with
a pike, and had well-nigh gotten one, but he was so strong, that he burst
off the bars of the pike and went away.  Then he took the boat-hook, and
hit one with that; but all would not prevail, so at length we let them
alone.

The 6th we saw a very great whale, and every day after we saw whales
continually.

The 16th, 17th, and 18th we saw great store of whales.

The 19th of July we fell into a great whirling and brustling of a tide,
setting to the northward; and sailing about half a league we came into a
very calm sea, which bent to the south-south-west.  Here we heard a
mighty great roaring of the sea, as if it had been the breach of some
shore, the air being so foggy and full of thick mist, that we could not
see the one ship from the other, being a very small distance asunder; so
the captain and the master, being in distrust how the tide might set
them, caused the _Moonshine_ to hoist out her boat and to sound, but they
could not find ground in three hundred fathoms and better.  Then the
captain, master, and I went towards the breach to see what it should be,
giving charge to our gunners that at every blast they should shoot off a
musket shot, to the intent we might keep ourselves from losing them; then
coming near to the breach, we met many islands of ice floating, which had
quickly compassed us about.  Then we went upon some of them, and did
perceive that all the roaring which we heard was caused only by the
rolling of this ice together.  Our company seeing us not to return
according to our appointment, left off shooting muskets and began to
shoot falconets, for they feared some mishap had befallen us; but before
night we came aboard again, with our boat laden with ice, which made very
good fresh water.  Then we bent our course toward the north, hoping by
that means to double the land.

The 20th, as we sailed along the coast, the fog brake up, and we
discovered the land, which was the most deformed, rocky, and mountainous
land that ever we saw, the first sight whereof did show as if it had been
in form of a sugar loaf, standing to our sight above the clouds, for that
it did show over the fog like a white liste in the sky, the tops
altogether covered with snow, and the shore beset with ice a league off
into the sea, making such irksome noise as that it seemed to be the true
pattern of desolation, and after the same our captain named it the land
of desolation.

The 21st the wind came northerly and overblew, so that we were
constrained to bend our course south again, for we perceived that we were
run into a very deep bay, where we were almost compassed with ice, for we
saw very much towards the north-north-east, west, and south-west; and
this day and this night we cleared ourselves of the ice, running
south-south-west along the shore.

Upon Thursday, being the 22nd of this month, about three of the clock in
the morning, we hoisted out our boat, and the captain, with six sailors,
went towards the shore, thinking to find a landing-place, for the night
before we did perceive the coast to be void of ice to our judgment; and
the same night we were all persuaded that we had seen a canoe rowing
along the shore, but afterwards we fell in some doubt of it, but we had
no great reason so to do.  The captain, rowing towards the shore, willed
the master to bear in with the land after him; and before he came near
the shore, by the space of a league, or about two miles, he found so much
ice that he could not get to land by any means.  Here our mariners put to
their lines to see if they could get any fish, because there were so many
seals upon the coast, and the birds did beat upon the water, but all was
in vain: the water about this coast was very black and thick, like to a
filthy standing pool; we sounded, and had ground in 120 fathoms.  While
the captain was rowing to the shore our men saw woods upon the rocks,
like to the rocks of Newfoundland, but I could not discern them; yet it
might be so very well, for we had wood floating upon the coast every day,
and the _Moonshine_ took up a tree at sea not far from the coast, being
sixty foot of length and fourteen handfuls about, having the root upon
it.  After, the captain came aboard, the weather being very calm and
fair, we bent our course toward the south with intent to double the land.

The 23rd we coasted the land which did lie east-north-east and
west-south-west.

The 24th, the wind being very fair at east, we coasted the land, which
did lie east and west, not being able to come near the shore by reason of
the great quantity of ice.  At this place, because the weather was
somewhat cold by reason of the ice, and the better to encourage our men,
their allowance was increased.  The captain and the master took order
that every mess, being five persons, should have half a pound of bread
and a can of beer every morning to breakfast.  The weather was not very
cold, but the air was moderate, like to our April weather in England.
When the wind came from the land or the ice it was somewhat cold, but
when it came off the sea it was very hot.

The 25th of this month we departed from sight of this land at six of the
clock in the morning, directing our course to the north-westward, hoping
in God's mercy to find our desired passage, and so continued above four
days.

The 29th of July we discovered land in 64 degrees 15 minutes of latitude,
bearing north-east from us.  The wind being contrary to go to the
north-westward, we bear in with this land to take some view of it, being
utterly void of the pester of ice, and very temperate.  Coming near the
coast we found many fair sounds and good roads for shipping, and many
great inlets into the land, whereby we judged this land to be a great
number of islands standing together.  Here, having moored our barque in
good order, we went on shore upon a small island to seek for water and
wood.  Upon this island we did perceive that there had been people, for
we found a small shoe and pieces of leather sewed with sinews and a piece
of fur, and wool like to beaver.  Then we went upon another island on the
other side of our ships, and the captain, the master, and I, being got up
to the top of a high rock, the people of the country having espied us
made a lamentable noise, as we thought, with great outcries and
screechings; we, hearing them, thought it had been the howling of wolves.
At last I halloed again, and they likewise cried; then we, perceiving
where they stood--some on the shore, and one rowing in a canoe about a
small island fast by them--we made a great noise, partly to allure them
to us and partly to warn our company of them.  Whereupon Master Bruton
and the master of his ship, with others of their company, made great
haste towards us, and brought our musicians with them from our ship,
purposing either by force to rescue us, if needs should so require, or
with courtesy to allure the people.  When they came unto us we caused our
musicians to play, ourselves dancing and making many signs of friendship.
At length there came ten canoes from the other islands, and two of them
came so near the shore where we were that they talked with us, the other
being in their boats a pretty way off.  Their pronunciation was very
hollow through the throat, and their speech such as we could not
understand, only we allured them by friendly embracings and signs of
courtesy.  At length one of them, pointing up to the sun with his hand,
would presently strike his breast so hard that we might hear the blow.
This he did many times before he would any way trust us.  Then John
Ellis, the master of the _Moonshine_, was appointed to use his best
policy to gain their friendship, who shook his breast and pointed to the
sun after their order, which when he had divers times done they began to
trust him, and one of them came on shore, to whom we threw our caps,
stockings, and gloves, and such other things as then we had about us,
playing with our music, and making signs of joy, and dancing.  So the
night coming we bade them farewell, and went aboard our barques.

The next morning, being the 30th of July, there came thirty-seven canoes
rowing by our ships calling to us to come on shore; we not making any
great haste unto them, one of them went up to the top of the rock, and
leaped and danced as they had done the day before, showing us a seal
skin, and another thing made like a timbrel, which he did beat upon with
a stick, making a noise like a small drum.  Whereupon we manned our boats
and came to them, they all staying in their canoes.  We came to the
water's side, where they were, and after we had sworn by the sun after
their fashion they did trust us.  So I shook hands with one of them, and
he kissed my hand, and we were very familiar with them.  We were in so
great credit with them upon this single acquaintance that we could have
anything they had.  We bought five canoes of them; we bought their
clothes from their backs, which were all made of seal skins and birds'
skins; their buskins, their hose, their gloves, all being commonly sewed
and well dressed, so that we were fully persuaded that they have divers
artificers among them.  We had a pair of buskins of them full of fine
wool like beaver.  Their apparel for heat was made of birds' skins with
their feathers on them.  We saw among them leather dressed like glover's
leather, and thick thongs like white leather of good length.  We had of
their darts and oars, and found in them that they would by no means
displease us, but would give us whatsoever we asked of them, and would be
satisfied with whatsoever we gave them.  They took great care one of
another, for when we had bought their boats then two other would come,
and carry him away between them that had sold us his.  They are a very
tractable people, void of craft or double dealing, and easy to be brought
to any civility or good order, but we judged them to be idolaters, and to
worship the sun.

During the time of our abode among these islands we found reasonable
quantity of wood, both fir, spruce, and juniper; which, whether it came
floating any great distance to these places where we found it, or whether
it grew in some great islands near the same place by us not yet
discovered, we know not.  But we judge that it groweth there farther into
the land than we were, because the people had great store of darts and
oars which they made none account of, but gave them to us for small
trifles as points and pieces of paper.  We saw about this coast
marvellous great abundance of seals sculling together like sculls of
small fish.  We found no fresh water among these islands, but only
snow-water, whereof we found great pools.  The cliffs were all of such
ore as Master Frobisher brought from Meta Incognita.  We had divers
shewes of study or Moscovie glass, shining not altogether unlike to
crystal.  We found an herb growing upon the rocks whose fruit was sweet,
full of red juice, and the ripe ones were like currants.  We found also
birch and willow growing like shrubs low to the ground.  These people
have great store of furs as we judged.  They made shows unto us the 30th
of this present, which was the second time of our being with them, after
they perceived we would have skins and furs, that they would go into the
country and come again the next day with such things as they had; but
this night the wind coming fair the captain and the master would by no
means detract the purpose our discovery.  And so the last of this month,
about four of the clock in the morning, in God's name we set sail, and
were all that day becalmed upon the coast.

The 1st of August we had a fair wind, and so proceeded towards the
north-west for our discovery.

The 6th of August we discovered land in 66 degrees 40 minutes of latitude
altogether void from the pester of ice; we anchored in a very fair road,
under a very brave mount, the cliffs whereof were as orient as gold.
This mount was named Mount Raleigh; the road where our ships lay at
anchor was called Totnes Road; the sound which did compass the mount was
named Exeter Sound; the foreland towards the north was called Dier's
Cape; the foreland towards the south was named Cape Walsingham.  So soon
as we were come to an anchor in Totnes Road under Mount Raleigh we espied
four white bears at the foot of the mount.  We, supposing them to be
goats or wolves, manned our boats and went towards them, but when we came
near the shore we found them to be white bears of a monstrous bigness;
we, being desirous of fresh victual and the sport, began to assault them,
and I being on land, one of them came down the hill right against me.  My
piece was charged with hail-shot and a bullet; I discharged my piece and
shot him in the neck; he roared a little, and took the water straight,
making small account of his hurt.  Then we followed him with our boat,
and killed him with boars' spears, and two more that night.  We found
nothing in their maws, but we judged by their dung that they fed upon
grass, because it appeared in all respects like the dung of a horse,
wherein we might very plainly see the very straws.

The 7th we went on shore to another bear, which lay all night upon the
top of an island under Mount Raleigh, and when we came up to him he lay
fast asleep.  I levelled at his head, and the stone of my piece gave no
fire; with that he looked up and laid down his head again; then I shot,
being charged with two bullets, and struck him in the head; he, being but
amazed, fell backwards, whereupon we ran all upon him with boar spears
and thrust him in the body, yet for all that he gripped away our boar
spears and went towards the water, and as he was going down he came back
again.  Then our master shot his boar spear and struck him in the head,
and made him to take the water, and swim into a cove fast by, where we
killed him and brought him aboard.  The breadth of his fore foot from one
side to the other was fourteen inches over.  They were very fat, so as we
were constrained to cast the fat away.  We saw a raven upon Mount
Raleigh.  We found withies, also, growing low like shrubs, and flowers
like primroses in the said place.  The coast is very mountainous,
altogether without wood, grass, or earth, and is only huge mountains of
stone, but the bravest stone that ever we saw.  The air was very moderate
in this country.

The 8th we departed from Mount Raleigh, coasting along the shore which
lieth south-south-west and east-north-east.

The 9th our men fell in dislike of their allowance because it was so
small as they thought.  Whereupon we made a new proportion, every mess,
being five to a mess, should have four pound of bread a day, twelve wine
quarts of beer, six new land fishes, and the flesh days a gin of pease
more; so we restrained them from their butter and cheese.

The 11th we came to the most southerly cape of this land, which we named
the Cape of God's Mercy, as being the place of our first entrance for the
discovery.  The weather being very foggy we coasted this north land; at
length when it brake up we perceived that we were shot into a very fair
entrance or passage, being in some places twenty leagues broad and in
some thirty, altogether void of any pester of ice, the weather very
tolerable, and the water of the very colour, nature, and quality of the
main ocean, which gave us the greater hope of our passage.  Having sailed
north-west sixty leagues in this entrance, we discovered certain islands
standing in the midst thereof, having open passages on both sides.
Whereupon our ships divided themselves, the one sailing on the north
side, the other on the south side of the said isles, where we stayed five
days, having the wind at south-east, very foggy, and foul weather.

The 14th we went on shore and found signs of people, for we found stones
laid up together like a wall, and saw the skull of a man or a woman.

The 15th we heard dogs howl on the shore, which we thought had been
wolves, and therefore we went on shore to kill them.  When we came on
land the dogs came presently to our boat very gently, yet we thought they
came to prey upon us, and therefore we shot at them and killed two, and
about the neck of one of them we found a leathern collar, whereupon we
thought them to be tame dogs.  There were twenty dogs like mastiffs, with
pricked ears and long bushed tails; we found a bone in the pizels of
their dogs.  Then we went farther and found two sleds made like ours in
England.  The one was made of fir, spruce, and oaken boards, sawn like
inch boards; the other was made all of whalebone, and there hung on the
tops of the sleds three heads of beasts which they had killed.  We saw
here larks, ravens, and partridges.

The 17th we went on shore, and in a little thing made like an oven with
stones I found many small trifles, as a small canoe made of wood, a piece
of wood made like an image, a bird made of bone, beads having small holes
in one end of them to hang about their necks, and other small things.
The coast was very barbarous, without wood or grass.  The rocks were very
fair, like marble, full of veins of divers colours.  We found a seal
which was killed not long before, being flayed and hid under stones.

Our captain and master searched still for probabilities of the passage,
and first found that this place was all islands with great sounds passing
between them.

Secondly, the water remained of one colour with the main ocean without
altering.

Thirdly, we saw to the west of those isles three or four whales in a
scull, which they judged to come from a westerly sea, because to the
eastward we saw not any whale.

Also, as we were rowing into a very great sound lying south-west from
whence these whales came, upon the sudden there came a violent
countercheck of a tide from the south-west against the flood which we
came with, not knowing from whence it was maintained.

Fifthly, in sailing 20 leagues within the mouth of this entrance we had
sounding in 90 fathoms, fair, grey, oozy sand, and the farther we run
into the westwards the deeper was the water, so that hard aboard the
shore among these isles we could not have ground in 330 fathoms.

Lastly, it did ebb and flow six or seven fathom up and down, the flood
coming from divers parts, so as we could not perceive the chief
maintenance thereof.

The 18th and 19th our captain and master determined what was best to do,
both for the safe guard of their credits and satisfy of the adventurers,
and resolved if the weather brake up to make further search.

The 20th, the wind came directly against us, so they altered their
purpose, and reasoned both for proceeding and returning.

The 21st, the wind being north-west, we departed from these islands, and
as we coasted the south shore we saw many fair sounds, whereby we were
persuaded that it was no firm land but islands.

The 23rd of this month the wind came south-east, very stormy and foul
weather.  So we were constrained to seek harbour upon the south coast of
this entrance, where we fell into a very fair sound, and anchored in 25
fathoms of green, oozy sand, where we went on shore, where we had
manifest signs of people, where they had made their fire, and laid stones
like a wall.  In this place we saw four very fair falcons, and Master
Bruton took from one of them his prey, which we judged by the wings and
legs to be a snipe, for the head was eaten off.

The 24th, in the afternoon, the wind coming somewhat fair, we departed
from this road, purposing by God's grace to return for England.

The 26th we departed from sight of the north land of this entrance,
directing our course homewards, until the 10th of the next month.

The 10th September we fell with the Land of Desolation, thinking to go on
shore, but we could get never a good harbour.  That night we put to sea
again thinking to search it the next day; but this night arose a very
great storm, and separated our ships so that we lost the sight of the
_Moonshine_.

The 13th about noon (having tried all the night before with a goose wing)
we set sail, and within two hours after we had sight of the _Moonshine_
again.  This day we departed from this land.

The 27th of this month we fell with sight of England.  This night we had
a marvellous storm, and lost the _Moonshine_.

The 30th September we came into Dartmouth, where we found the
_Moonshine_, being come in not two hours before.




THE SECOND VOYAGE ATTEMPTED BY MASTER JOHN DAVIS,


_With others_, _for the discovery of the North-West Passage_, _in Anno_
1586.

The 7th day of May I departed from the port of Dartmouth for the
discovery of the North-West Passage with a ship of a 120 tons, named the
_Mermaid_; a barque of 60 tons, named the _Sunshine_; a barque of 35 tons
named the _Moonlight_; and a pinnace of 10 tons named the _North Star_.

And the 15th June I discovered land, in the latitude of 60 degrees, and
in longitude from the meridian of London westward 47 degrees, mightily
pestered with ice and snow, so that there was no hope of landing; the ice
lay in some places 10 leagues, in some 20, and in some 50 leagues off the
shore, so that we were constrained to bear into 57 degrees to double the
same, and to recover a free sea, which through God's favourable mercy we
at length obtained.

The nine-and-twentieth day of June, after many tempestuous storms, we
again discovered land in longitude from the meridian of London 58 degrees
30 minutes, and in latitude 64 being east from us, into which course,
since it pleased God by contrary winds to force us, I thought it very
necessary to bear in with it, and there to set up our pinnace, provided
in the _Mermaid_ to be our scout for this discovery, and so much the
rather, because the year before I had been in the same place and found it
very convenient for such a purpose, well stored with float wood, and
possessed by a people of tractable conversation; so that the
nine-and-twentieth of this month we arrived within the isles which lay
before this land, lying north-north-west and south-south-east we know not
how far.  This land is very high and mountainous, having before it on the
west side a mighty company of isles full of fair sounds and harbours.
This land was very little troubled with snow, and the sea altogether void
of ice.

The ships being within the sounds we sent our boats to search for shallow
water, where we might anchor, which in this place is very hard to find;
and as the boat went sounding and searching, the people of the country
having espied them, came in their canoes towards them with many shouts
and cries; but after they had espied in the boat some of our company that
were the year before here with us, they presently rowed to the boat and
took hold in the oar, and hung about the boat with such comfortable joy
as would require a long discourse to be uttered; they came with the boats
to our ships, making signs that they knew all those that the year before
had been with them.  After I perceived their joy and small fear of us,
myself with the merchants and others of the company went ashore, bearing
with me twenty knives.  I had no sooner landed, but they leapt out of
their canoes and came running to me and the rest, and embraced us with
many signs of hearty welcome.  At this present there were eighteen of
them, and to each of them I gave a knife; they offered skins to me for
reward, but I made signs that it was not sold, but given them of
courtesy, and so dismissed them for that time, with signs that they
should return again after certain hours.

The next day, with all possible speed, the pinnace was landed upon an
isle there to be finished to serve our purpose for the discovery, which
isle was so convenient for that purpose, as that we were very well able
to defend ourselves against many enemies.  During the time that the
pinnace was there setting up, the people came continually unto us,
sometimes a hundred canoes at a time, sometimes forty, fifty, more and
less as occasion served.  They brought with them seal skins, stags'
skins, white hares, seal fish, salmon peel, small cod, dry caplin, with
other fish and birds such as the country did yield.

Myself, still desirous to have a farther search of this place, sent one
of the ship boats to one part of the land, and myself went to another
part to search for the habitation of this people, with straight
commandment that there should be no injury offered to any of the people,
neither any one shot.

The boats that went from me found the tents of the people made with seal
skins set up upon timber, wherein they found great store of dried caplin,
being a little fish no bigger than a pilchard.  They found bags of train
oil, many little images cut in wood, seal skins in tan tubs with many
other such trifles, whereof they diminished nothing.

They also found ten miles within the snowy mountains a plain champion
country, with earth and grass, such as our moory and waste grounds of
England are.  They went up into a river (which in the narrowest place is
two leagues broad) about ten leagues, finding it still to continue they
knew not how far; but I with my company took another river, which
although at the first it offered a large inlet, yet it proved but a deep
bay, the end whereof in four hours I attained, and there leaving the boat
well manned, went with the rest of my company three or four miles into
the country, but found nothing, nor saw anything, save only gripes,
ravens, and small birds, as lark and linnet.

The 3rd of July I manned my boat, and went with fifty canoes attending
upon me up into another sound, where the people by signs willed me to go,
hoping to find their habitation; at length they made signs that I should
go into a warm place to sleep, at which place I went on shore, and
ascended the top of high hill to see into the country, but perceiving my
labour vain, I returned again to my boat, the people still following me
and my company very diligent to attend us, and to help us up the rocks,
and likewise down; at length I was desirous to have our men leap with
them, which was done, but our men did overleap them; from leaping they
went to wrestling; we found them strong and nimble, and to have skill in
wrestling, for they cast some of our men that were good wrestlers.  The
4th of July we launched our pinnace, and had forty of the people to help
us, which they did very willingly.  At this time our men again wrestled
with them, and found them as before, strong and skilful.  This 4th of
July, the master of the _Mermaid_ went to certain islands to store
himself with wood, where he found a grave with divers buried in it, only
covered with seal skins, having a cross laid over them.  The people are
of good stature, well in body proportioned, with small, slender hands and
feet, with broad visages, and small eyes, wide mouths, the most part
unbearded, great lips, and close toothed.  Their custom is, as often as
they go from us, still at their return, to make a new truce, in this
sort: holding his hand up to the sun, with a loud voice crieth
"Ylyaoute," and striketh his breast, with like signs being promised
safety, he giveth credit.  These people are much given to bleed, and
therefore stop their noses with deer hair or the hair of an elan.  They
are idolaters, and have images great store, which they wear about them,
and in their boats, which we suppose they worship.  They are witches, and
have many kinds of enchantments, which they often used, but to small
purpose, thanks be to God.

Being among them at shore, the 4th of July, one of them, making a long
oration, began to kindle a fire, in this manner: he took a piece of a
board, wherein was a hole half through; unto that hole he puts the end of
a round stick, like unto a bed staff, wetting the end thereof in train,
and in fashion of a turner, with a piece of leather, by his violent
motion doth very speedily produce fire; which done, with turfs he made a
fire, into which, with many words and strange gestures, he put divers
things which we suppose to be a sacrifice.  Myself and divers of my
company standing by, they were desirous to have me go into the smoke; I
willed them likewise to stand in the smoke, in which they by no means
would do.  I then took one of them, and thrust him into the smoke, and
willed one of my company to tread out the fire, and to spurn it into the
sea, which was done to show them that we did contemn their sorcery.
These people are very simple in all their conversation, but marvellous
thievish, especially for iron, which they have in great account.  They
began through our lenity to show their vile nature; they began to cut our
cables; they cut away the _Moonlight's_ boat from her stern; they cut our
cloth where it lay to air, though we did carefully look unto it, they
stole our oars, a calliver, a boat's spear, a sword, with divers other
things, whereat the company and masters being grieved, for our better
security desired me to dissolve this new friendship, and to leave the
company of these thievish miscreants; whereupon there was a calliver shot
among them, and immediately upon the same a falcon, which strange noise
did sore amaze them, so that with speed they departed; notwithstanding,
their simplicity is such, that within ten hours after they came again to
us to entreat peace; which, being promised, we again fell into a great
league.  They brought us seal skins and salmon peel, but, seeing iron,
they could in nowise forbear stealing; which, when I perceived it, did
but minister unto me an occasion of laughter to see their simplicity, and
willed that in no case they should be any more hardly used, but that our
own company should be the more vigilant to keep their things, supposing
it to be very hard in so short time to make them know their evils.  They
eat all their meat raw, they live most upon fish, they drink salt water,
and eat grass and ice with delight; they are never out of the water, but
live in the nature of fishes, but only when dead sleep taketh them, and
then under a warm rock, laying his boat upon the land, he lieth down to
sleep.  Their weapons are all darts, but some of them have bow and arrows
and slings.  They make nets to take their fish of the fin of a whale;
they do all their things very artfully, and it should seem that these
simple, thievish islanders have war with those of the main, for many of
them are sore wounded, which wounds they received upon the main land, as
by signs they gave us to understand.  We had among them copper ore, black
copper, and red copper; they pronounce their language very hollow, and
deep in the throat; these words following we learned from them:--
Kesinyoh, eat some.                 Mysacoah, wash it.
Madlycoyte, music.                  Lethicksaneg, a seal-skin.
Aginyoh, go, fetch.                 Canyglow, kiss me.
Yliaoute, I mean no harm.           Ugnera, my son.
Ponameg, a boat.                    Acu, shot.
Conah, leap.                        Aba, fallen down.
Maatuke, fish.                      Icune, come hither.
Sambah, below.                      Awennye, yonder.
Maconmeg, will you have this?       Nugo, no.
Cocah, go to him.                   Tucktodo, a fog.
Paaotyck, an oar.                   Lechiksah, a skin.
Asanock, a dart.                    Maccoah, a dart.
Sawygmeg, a knife.                  Sugnacoon, a coat.
Uderah, a nose.                     Gounah, come down.
Aoh, iron.                          Sasobneg, a bracelet.
Blete, an eye.                      Ugnake, a tongue.
Unvicke, give it.                   Ataneg, a meal.
Tuckloak, a stag or elan.           Macuah, a beard.
Panygmah, a needle.                 Pignagogah, a thread.
Aob, the sea.                       Quoysah, give it to me.
The 7th of July, being very desirous to search the habitation of this
country, I went myself with our new pinnace into the body of the land,
thinking it to be a firm continent, and passing up a very large river a
great flaw of wind took me, whereby we were constrained to seek succour
for that night, which being had, I landed with the most part of my
company, and went to the top of a high mountain, hoping from thence to
see into the country; but the mountains were so many and so mighty as
that my purpose prevailed not, whereupon I again returned to my pinnace,
and willing divers of my company to gather mussels for my supper, whereof
in this place there was great store, myself having espied a very strange
sight, especially to me, that never before saw the like, which was a
mighty whirlwind, taking up the water in very great quantity, furiously
mounting it into the air, which whirlwind was not for a puff or blast,
but continual for the space of three hours, with very little
intermission, which since it was in the course that I should pass, we
were constrained that night to take up our lodging under the rocks.

The next morning, the storm being broken up, we went forward in our
attempt, and sailed into a mighty great river, directly into the body of
the land, and in brief found it to be no firm land, but huge, waste, and
desert isles with mighty sounds and inlets passing between sea and sea.
Whereupon we returned towards our ships, and landing to stop a flood, we
found the burial of these miscreants; we found of their fish in bags,
plaices, and caplin dried, of which we took only one bag and departed.
The 9th of this month we came to our ships, where we found the people
desirous in their fashion of friendship and barter: our mariners
complained heavily against the people, and said that my lenity and
friendly using of them gave them stomach to mischief, for "they have
stolen an anchor from us.  They have cut our cable very dangerously, they
have cut our boats from our stern, and now, since your departure, with
slings they spare us not with stones of half a pound weight.  And will
you still endure these injuries?  It is a shame to bear them."  I desired
them to be content, and said I doubted not but all should be well.  The
10th of this month I went to the shore, the people following me in their
canoes; I tolled them on shore, and used them with much courtesy, and
then departed aboard, they following me and my company.  I gave some of
them bracelets, and caused seven or eight of them to come aboard, which
they did willingly; and some of them went into the top of our ship, and
thus courteously using them I let them depart.  The sun was no sooner
down but they began to practise their devilish nature, and with slings
threw stones very fiercely into the _Moonlight_ and struck one of her
men, the boatswain, that he overthrew withal: whereat being moved, I
changed my courtesy and grew to hatred; myself in my own boat well manned
with shot, and the barques boat likewise pursued them, and gave them
divers shot, but to small purpose, by reason of their swift rowing; so
small content we returned.

The 11th of this month there came five of them to make a new truce; the
master of the _Admiral_ came to me to show me of their coming, and
desired to have them taken and kept as prisoners until we had his anchor
again; but when he saw that the chief ring-leader and master of mischief
was one of the five, then was vehement to execute his purpose, so it was
determined to take him; he came crying "Yliaout," and striking his breast
offered a pair of gloves to sell; the master offered him a knife for
them: so two of them came to us; the one was not touched, but the other
was soon captive among us; then we pointed to him and his fellows for our
anchor, which being had we made signs that he should he set at liberty
within one hour that he came aboard; the wind came fair, whereupon we
weighed and set sail, and so brought the fellow with us.  One of his
fellows still following our ship close aboard, talked with him, and made
a kind of lamentation, we still using him well, with "Yliaout," which was
the common course of courtesy.  At length this fellow aboard us spoke
four or five words unto the other and clapped his two hands upon his
face, whereupon the other doing the like, departed, as we supposed, with
heavy cheer.  We judged the covering of his face with his hands, and
bowing of his body down, signified his death.  At length he became a
pleasant companion among us.  I gave him a new suit of frieze after the
English fashion, because I saw he could not endure the cold, of which he
was very joyful; he trimmed up his darts, and all his fishing tools, and
would make oakum, and set his hand to a rope's end upon occasion.  He
lived with the dry caplin that I took when I was searching in the
pinnace, and did eat dry new land fish.

All this while, God be thanked, our people were in very good health, only
one young man excepted, who died at sea the 14th of this month, and the
15th, according to the order of the sea, with praise given to God by
service, was cast overboard.

The 17th of this month, being in the latitude of 63 degrees 8 minutes, we
fell upon a most mighty and strange quantity of ice, in one entire mass,
so big as that we knew not the limits thereof, and being withal so very
high, in form of a land, with bays and capes, and like high cliff land as
that we supposed it to be land, and therefore sent our pinnace off to
discover it; but at her return we were certainly informed that it was
only ice, which bred great admiration to us all, considering the huge
quantity thereof incredible to be reported in truth as it was, and
therefore I omit to speak any further thereof.  This only, I think that
the like before was never seen, and in this place we had very stickle and
strong currents.

We coasted this mighty mass of ice until the 30th of July, finding it a
mighty bar to our purpose: the air in this time was so contagious, and
the sea so pestered with ice, as that all hope was banished of
proceeding; for the 24th of July all our shrouds, ropes, and sails were
so frozen, and encompassed with ice, only by a gross fog, as seemed to be
more than strange, since the last year I found this sea free and
navigable, without impediments.

Our men through this extremity began to grow sick and feeble, and withal
hopeless of good success; whereupon, very orderly, with good discretion
they entreated me to regard the state of this business, and withal
advised me that in conscience I ought to regard the safety of mine own
life with the preservation of theirs, and that I should not, through my
overboldness, leave their widows and fatherless children to give me
bitter curses.  This matter in conscience did greatly move me to regard
their estates, yet considering the excellency of the business, if it
might be obtained, the great hope of certainty by the last year's
discovery, and that there was yet a third way not put in practice, I
thought it would grow to my disgrace if this action by my negligence
should grow into discredit: whereupon seeking help from God, the fountain
of all mercies, it pleased His Divine Majesty to move my heart to
prosecute that which I hope shall be to His glory, and to the
contentation of every Christian mind.  Whereupon, falling into
consideration that the _Mermaid_, albeit a very strong and sufficient
ship, yet by reason of her burden not so convenient and nimble as a
smaller barque, especially in such desperate hazards; further, having in
account how great charge to the adventurers, being at 100 livres the
month, and that in doubtful service, all the premises considered, with
divers other things, I determined to furnish the _Moonlight_ with
revictualing and sufficient men, and to proceed in this action as God
should direct me; whereupon I altered our course from the ice, and bore
east-south-east to the cover of the next shore, where this thing might be
performed; so with favourable wind it pleased God that the 1st of August
we discovered the land in latitude 66 degrees 33 minutes, and in
longitude from the meridian of London 70 degrees, void of trouble,
without snow or ice.

The 2nd of August we harboured ourselves in a very excellent good road,
where with all speed we graved the _Moonlight_, and revictualled her; we
searched this country with our pinnace while the barque was trimming,
which William Eston did: he found all this land to be only islands, with
a sea on the east, a sea on the west, and a sea on the north.  In this
place we found it very hot, and we were very much troubled with a fly
which is called mosquito, for they did sting grievously.  The people of
this place at our first coming in caught a seal, and, with bladders fast
tied to him sent him in to us with the flood, so as he came right with
our ships, which we took as a friendly present from them.

The 5th of August I went with the two masters and others to the top of a
hill, and by the way William Eston espied three canoes lying under a
rock, and went unto them: there were in them skins, darts, with divers
superstitious toys, whereof we diminished no thing, but left upon every
boat a silk point, a bullet of lead, and a pin.  The next day, being the
6th of August, the people came unto us without fear, and did barter with
us for skins, as the other people did: they differ not from the other,
neither in their canoes nor apparel, yet is their pronunciation more
plain than the others, and nothing hollow in the throat.  Our miscreant
aboard of us kept himself close, and made show that he would fain have
another companion.  Thus being provided, I departed from this land the
12th of August at six of the clock in the morning, where I left the
_Mermaid_ at anchor; the 14th sailing west about 50 leagues we discovered
land, being in latitude 66 degrees 19 minutes: this land is 70 leagues
from the other from whence we came.  This 14th day, from nine o'clock at
night till three o'clock in the morning, we anchored by an island of ice
12 leagues off the shore, being moored to the ice.

The 15th day, at three o'clock in the morning, we departed from this land
to the south, and the 18th of August we discovered land north-west from
us in the morning, being a very fair promontory, in latitude 65 degrees,
having no land on the south.  Here we had great hope of a through
passage.

This day, at three o'clock in the afternoon, we again discovered land
south-west and by south from us, where at night we were becalmed.  The
19th of this month at noon, by observation, we were in 64 degrees 20
minutes.  From the 18th day at noon until the 19th at noon, by precise
ordinary care, we had sailed fifteen leagues south and by west, yet by
art and more exact observation we found our course to be south-west, so
that we plainly perceived a great current striking to the west.

This land is nothing in sight but isles, which increaseth our hope.  This
19th of August, at six o'clock in the afternoon, it began to snow, and so
continued all night, with foul weather and much wind, so that we were
constrained to lie at hull all night, five leagues off the shore: in the
morning, being the 20th of August, the fog and storm breaking up, we bore
in with the land, and at nine o'clock in the morning we anchored in a
very fair and safe road and locket for all weathers.  At ten o'clock I
went on shore to the top of a very high hill, where I perceived that this
land was islands; at four o'clock in the afternoon we weighed anchor,
having a fair north-north-east wind, with very fair weather; at six
o'clock we were clear without the land, and so shaped our course to the
south, to discover the coast whereby the passage may be through God's
mercy found.

We coasted this land till the 28th day of August, finding it still to
continue towards the south, from the latitude of 67 to 57 degrees; we
found marvellous great store of birds, gulls and mews, incredible to be
reported, whereupon being calm weather we lay one glass upon the lee to
prove for fish, in which space we caught one hundred of cod, although we
were but badly provided for fishing, not being our purpose.  This 28th,
having great distrust of the weather, we arrived in a very fair harbour
in the latitude of 56 degrees, and sailed ten leagues in the same, being
two leagues broad, with very fair woods on both sides; in this place we
continued until the 1st of September, in which time we had two very great
storms.  I landed, and went six miles by guess into the country, and
found that the woods were fir, pine-apple, alder, yew, withy, and birch;
here we saw a black bear; this place yieldeth great store of birds, as
pheasant, partridge, Barbary hens, or the like, wild geese, ducks,
blackbirds, jays, thrushes, with other kinds of small birds.  Of the
partridge and pheasant we killed great store with bow and arrows in this
place; at the harbour-mouth we found great store of cod.

The 1st of September at ten o'clock we set sail, and coasted the shore
with very fair weather.  The third day being calm, at noon we struck
sail, and let fall a cadge anchor to prove whether we could take any
fish, being in latitude 54 degrees 30 minutes, in which place we found
great abundance of cod, so that the hook was no sooner overboard but
presently a fish was taken.  It was the largest and best refet fish that
ever I saw, and divers fishermen that were with me said that they never
saw a more suaule, or better skull of fish in their lives, yet had they
seen great abundance.

The 4th of September, at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, we anchored in a
very good road among great store of isles, the country low land,
pleasant, and very full of fair woods.  To the north of this place eight
leagues we had a perfect hope of the passage, finding a mighty great sea
passing between two lands west.  The south land to our judgment being
nothing but isles, we greatly desired to go into this sea, but the wind
was directly against us.  We anchored in four fathom fine sand.

In this place is fowl and fish mighty store.

The 6th of September, having a fair north-north-west wind, having trimmed
our barque, we purposed to depart, and sent five of our sailors, young
men, ashore to an island to fetch certain fish which we purposed to
weather, and therefore left it all night covered upon the isle; the
brutish people of this country lay secretly lurking in the wood, and upon
the sudden assaulted our men, which when we perceived, we presently let
slip our cables upon the halse, and under our foresail bore into the
shore, and with all expedition discharged a double musket upon them
twice, at the noise whereof they fled; notwithstanding, to our very great
grief, two of our men were slain with their arrows, and two grievously
wounded, of whom, at this present, we stand in very great doubt; only one
escaped by swimming, with an arrow shot through his arm.  These wicked
miscreants never offered parley or speech, but presently executed their
cursed fury.  This present evening it pleased God farther to increase our
sorrows with a mighty tempestuous storm, the wind being north-north-east,
which lasted unto the 10th of this month very extreme.  We unrigged our
ship, and purposed to cut-down our masts; the cable of our shut anchor
broke, so that we only expected to be driven on shore amongst these
cannibals for their prey.  Yet in this deep distress the mighty mercy of
God, when hope was past, gave us succour, and sent us a fair lee, so as
we recovered our anchor again, and new-moored our ship; where we saw that
God manifestly delivered us, for the strains of one of our cables were
broken; we only rode by an old junk.  Thus being freshly moored, a new
storm arose, the wind being west-north-west, very forcible, which lasted
unto the 10th day at night.

The 11th day, with a fair west-north-west wind, we departed with trust in
God's mercy, shaping our course for England, and arrived in the West
Country in the beginning of October.

                                * * * * *

_Master Davis being arrived_, _wrote his letter to Master William
Sanderson of London_, _concerning his voyage_, _as followeth_.

    Sir,--The _Sunshine_ came into Dartmouth the 4th of this month: she
    hath been at Iceland, and from thence to Greenland, and so to
    Estotiland, from thence to Desolation, and to our merchants, where
    she made trade with the people, staying in the country twenty days.
    They have brought home 500 seal-skins, and 140 half skins and pieces
    of skins.  I stand in great doubt of the pinnace; God be merciful
    unto the poor men and preserve them if it be His blessed will.

    I have now full experience of much of the north-west part of the
    world, and have brought the passage to that certainty, as that I am
    sure it must be in one of four places, or else not at all.  And
    further, I can assure you upon the peril of my life, that this voyage
    may be performed without further charge, nay, with certain profit to
    the adventurers, if I may have but your favour in the action.  Surely
    it shall cost me all my hope of welfare and my portion of Sandridge,
    but I will, by God's mercy, see an end of these businesses.  I hope I
    shall find favour with you to see your card.  I pray God it be so
    true as the card shall be which I will bring to you, and I hope in
    God that your skill in navigation shall be gainful unto you, although
    at the first it hath not proved so.  And thus with my most humble
    commendations I commit you to God, desiring no longer to live than I
    shall be yours most faithfully to command.  From this 14th of
    October, 1586.

    Yours with my heart, body and life to command,

                                                               JOHN DAVIS.

                                * * * * *

_The relation of the course which the_ "_Sunshine_," _a barque of fifty
tons_, _and the_ "_North Star_," _a small pinnace_, _being two vessels of
the fleet of Master John Davis_, _held after he had sent them from him to
discover the passage between Greenland and Iceland_.  _Written by Henry
Morgan_, _servant to Master William Sanderson of London_.

The 7th day of May, 1586, we departed out of Dartmouth Haven four sails,
to wit, the _Mermaid_, the _Sunshine_, the _Moonshine_, and the _North
Star_.  In the _Sunshine_ were sixteen men, whose names were these:
Richard Pope, master; Mark Carter, master's mate; Henry Morgan, purser;
George Draward, John Mandie, Hugh Broken, Philip Jane, Hugh Hempson,
Richard Borden, John Filpe, Andrew Madocke, William Wolcome, Robert
Wagge, carpenter, John Bruskome, William Ashe, Simon Ellis.

Our course was west-north-west the 7th and 8th days; and the ninth day in
the morning we were on head of the Tarrose of Scilly.  Thus coasting
along the south part of Ireland, the 11th day we were on the head of the
Dorses, and our course was south-south-west until six of the clock the
12th day.  The 13th day our course was north-west.  We remained in the
company of the _Mermaid_ and the _Moonshine_ until we came to the
latitude of 60 degrees, and there it seemed best to our general, Master
Davis, to divide his fleet, himself sailing to the north-west, and to
direct the _Sunshine_, wherein I was, and the pinnace called the _North
Star_, to seek a passage northward between Greenland and Iceland to the
latitude of 80 degrees, if land did not let us.  So the 7th day of June
we departed from them, and the 9th of the same we came to a firm land of
ice, which we coasted along the 9th, the 10th, and the 11th days of June;
and the 11th day at six of the clock at night we saw land, which was very
high, which afterwards we knew to be Iceland, and the 12th day we
harboured there, and found many people; the land lieth east and by north
in 66 degrees.

Their commodities were green fish and Iceland lings and stock fish, and a
fish which is called catfish, of all which they had great store.  They
had also kine, sheep, and horses, and hay for their cattle and for their
horses.  We saw also of their dogs.  Their dwelling-houses were made on
both sides with stones, and wood laid across over them, which was covered
over with turfs of earth, and they are flat on the tops, and many of
these stood hard by the shore.  Their boats were made with wood, and iron
all along the keel like our English boats; and they had nails for to nail
them withal, and fish-hooks, and other things for to catch fish as we
have here in England.  They had also brazen kettles, and girdles and
purses made of leather, and knops on them of copper, and hatchets, and
other small tools as necessary as we have.  They dry their fish in the
sun; and when they are dry they pack them up in the top of their houses.
If we would go thither to fishing more than we do, we should make it a
very good voyage, for we got a hundred green fishes in one morning.  We
found here two Englishmen with a ship, which came out of England about
Easter Day of this present year, 1586; and one of them came aboard of us
and brought us two lambs.  The Englishman's name was Master John Royden,
of Ipswich, merchant; he was bound for London with his ship.  And this is
the sum of that which I observed in Iceland.  We departed from Iceland
the 16th day of June, in the morning, and our course was north-west; and
saw on the coast two small barques going to a harbour; we went not to
them, but saw them afar off.  Thus we continued our course unto the end
of this month.

The 3rd day of July we were in between two firm lands of ice, and passed
in between them all that day until it was night, and then the master
turned back again, and so away we went towards Greenland.  And the 7th
day of July we did see Greenland, and it was very high, and it looked
very blue; but we could not come to harbour in the land because we were
hindered by a firm land, as it were, of ice, which was along the shore's
side; but we were within three leagues of the land, coasting the same
divers days together.  The 17th day of July we saw the place which our
captain, Master John Davis, the year before had named the Land of
Desolation, where we could not go on shore for ice.  The 18th day we were
likewise troubled with ice, and went in amongst it at three of the clock
in the morning.  After we had cleared ourselves thereof we ranged all
along the coast of Desolation until the end of the aforesaid month.

The 3rd day of August we came in sight of Gilbert's Sound in the latitude
of 64 degrees 15 minutes, which was the place where we were appointed to
meet our general and the rest of our fleet.  Here we came to a harbour at
six of the clock at night.

The 4th day, in the morning, the master went on shore with ten of his
men, and they brought us four of the people rowing in their boats, aboard
of the ship.  And in the afternoon I went on shore with six of our men,
and there came to us seven of them when we were on land.  We found on
shore three dead people, and two of them had their staves lying by them,
and their old skins wrapped about them, and the other had nothing lying
by, wherefore we thought it was a woman.  We also saw their houses, near
the seaside, which were made with pieces of wood on both sides, and
crossed over with poles and then covered over with earth.  We found foxes
running upon the hills.  As for the place, it is broken land all the way
that we went, and full of broken islands.  The 21st of August the master
sent the boat on shore for wood, with six of his men, and there were
one-and-thirty of the people of the country, which went on shore to them,
and they went about to kill them as we thought, for they shot their darts
towards them, and we that were aboard the ship did see them go on shore
to our men, whereupon the master sent the pinnace after them; and when
they saw the pinnace coming towards them they turned back, and the master
of the pinnace did shoot off a culliver to them the same time, but hurt
none of them, for his meaning was only to put them in fear.  Divers times
they did wave us on shore to play with them at the football, and some of
our company went on shore to play with them, and our men did cast them
down as soon as they did come to strike the ball.  And thus much of that
which we did see and do in that harbour where we arrived first.

The 23rd day we departed from the merchants where we had been first, and
our course from thence was south and by west, and the wind was
north-east, and we ran that day and night about five or six leagues until
we came to another harbour.

The 24th, about eleven of the clock in the forenoon, we entered into the
aforesaid new harbour, and as we came in we did see dogs running upon the
islands.  When we were come in, there came to us four of the people which
were with us before in the other harbour; and where we rowed we had sandy
ground.  We saw no wood growing, but found small pieces of wood upon the
islands, and some small pieces of sweet wood among the same.  We found
great harts' horns, but could see none of the stags where we went, but we
found their footings.  As for the bones which we received of the savages,
I cannot tell of what beasts they be.  The stones that we found in the
country were black, and some white; as I think, they be of no value;
nevertheless I have brought examples of them to you.

The 30th of August we departed from this harbour towards England, and the
wind took us contrary, so that we were fain to go to another harbour the
same day at eleven of the clock.  And there came to us thirty-nine of the
people and brought us thirteen seal-skins, and after we received these
skins of them the master sent the carpenter to change one of our boats
which we had bought of them before; and they would have taken the boat
from him perforce, and when they saw they could not take it from us they
shot with their darts at us, and struck one of our men with one of their
darts, and John Filpe shot one of them in the breast with an arrow.  And
they came to us again, and four of our men went into the ship boat, and
they shot with their darts at our men; but our men took one of their
people in his boat, into the ship boat, and he hurt one of them with his
knife, but we killed three of them in their boats, two of them were hurt
with arrows in the breast, and he that was aboard our boat was shot with
an arrow, and hurt with a sword, and beaten with staves, whom our men
cast overboard; but the people caught him and carried him on shore upon
their boats, and the other two also, and so departed from us.  And three
of them went on shore hard by us where they had their dogs, and those
three came away from their dogs, and presently one of their dogs came
swimming towards us hard aboard the ship, whereupon our master caused the
gunner to shoot off one of the great pieces--towards the people, and so
the dog turned back to land, and within an hour after there came of the
people hard aboard the ship, but they would not come to us as they did
before.

The 31st of August we departed from Gilbert's Sound for England, and when
we came out of the harbour there came after us seventeen of the people
looking which way we went.

The 2nd of September we lost sight of the land at twelve of the clock at
noon.

The 3rd day at night we lost sight of the _North Star_, our pinnace, in a
very great storm, and lay a-hull tarrying for them the 4th day, but could
hear no more of them.  Thus we shaped our course the 5th day
south-south-east, and sailing unto the 27th of the said month, we came in
sight of Cape Clear in Ireland.

The 30th day we entered into our own Channel.

The 2nd of October we had sight of the Isle of Wight.

The 3rd we coasted all along the shore, and the 4th and 5th.

The 6th of the said month of October we came into the River of Thames as
high as Ratcliffe in safety, God be thanked!




THE THIRD VOYAGE NORTH-WESTWARD, MADE BY JOHN DAVIS,


_Gentleman_, _as chief captain and pilot general for the discovery of a
passage to the Isles of the Molucca_, _or the coast of China_, _in the
year_ 1587.  _Written by John Janes_, _servant to the aforesaid Master
William Sanderson_.

May.--The 19th of this present month, about midnight, we weighed our
anchors, set sail and departed from Dartmouth with two barques and a
clincher, the one named the _Elizabeth_, of Dartmouth, the other the
_Sunshine_, of London, and the clincher called the _Ellin_, of London;
thus, in God's name, we set forwards with wind at north-east, a good
fresh gale.  About three hours after our departure, the night being
somewhat thick with darkness, we had lost the pinnace.  The captain,
imagining that the men had run away with her, willed the master of the
_Sunshine_ to stand to seawards and see if we could descry them, we
bearing in with the shore for Plymouth.  At length we descried her, bore
with her, and demanded what the cause was; they answered that the tiller
of their helm was burst, so shaping our course west-south-west, we went
forward, hoping that a hard beginning would make a good ending; yet some
of us were doubtful of it, failing in reckoning that she was a clincher;
nevertheless, we put our trust in God.

The 21st we met with the _Red Lion_ of London, which came from the coast
of Spain, which was afraid that we had been men-of-war; but we hailed
them, and after a little conference we desired the master to carry our
letters for London, directed to my uncle Sanderson, who promised us safe
delivery.  And after we had heaved them a lead and a line, whereunto we
had made fast our letters, before they could get them into the ship they
fell into the sea, and so all our labour and theirs also was lost;
notwithstanding, they promised to certify our departure at London, and so
we departed, and the same day we had sight of Scilly.  The 22nd the wind
was at north-east by east, with fair weather, and so the 23rd and 24th
the like.  The 25th we laid our ships on the lee for the _Sunshine_, who
was a-rummaging for a leak; they had 500 strokes at the pump in a watch,
with the wind at north-west.

The 26th and 27th we had fair weather, but this 27th the pinnace's
foremast was blown overboard.  The 28th the _Elizabeth_ towed the
pinnace, which was so much bragged of by the owner's report before we
came out of England, but at sea she was like a cart drawn with oxen.
Sometimes we towed her, because she could not sail for scant wind.

The 31st day our captain asked if the pinnace were staunch.  Peerson
answered that she was as sound and staunch as a cup.  This made us
something glad when we saw she would brook the sea, and was not leaky.

_June_.--The first six days we had fair weather; after that for five days
we had fog and rain, the wind being south.

The 12th we had clear weather.  The mariners in the _Sunshine_ and the
master could not agree; the mariners would go on their voyage a-fishing,
because the year began to waste; the master would not depart till he had
the company of the _Elizabeth_, whereupon the master told our captain
that he was afraid his men would shape some contrary course while he was
asleep, and so he should lose us.  At length, after much talk and many
threatenings, they were content to bring us to the land which we looked
for daily.

The 13th we had fog and rain.

The 14th day we discovered land at five of the clock in the morning,
being very great and high mountains, the tops of the hills being covered
with snow.  Here the wind was variable, sometimes north-east,
east-north-east, and east by north; but we imagined ourselves to be 16 or
17 leagues off from the shore.

The 15th we had reasonably clear weather.

The 16th we came to an anchor about four or five of the clock in the
afternoon.  The people came presently to us, after the old manner, with
crying "Il y a oute," and showed us seal-skins.

The 17th we began to set up the pinnace that Peerson framed at Dartmouth,
with the boards which he brought from London.

The 18th, Peerson and the carpenters of the ships began to set on the
planks.

The 19th, as we went about an island, were found black pumice stones, and
salt kerned on the rocks, very white and glistering.  This day, also, the
master of the _Sunshine_ took one of the people, a very strong, lusty
young fellow.

The 20th, about two of the clock in the morning, the savages came to the
island where our pinnace was built ready to be launched, and tore the two
upper strakes and carried them away, only for the love of the iron in the
boards.  While they were about this practice, we manned the _Elizabeth's_
boat to go ashore to them.  Our men, being either afraid or amazed, were
so long before they came to shore, that our captain willed them to stay,
and made the gunner give fire to a saker, and laid the piece level with
the boat, which the savages had turned on the one side because we could
not hurt them with our arrows, and made the boat their bulwark against
the arrows which we shot at them.  Our gunner, having made all things
ready, gave fire to the piece, and fearing to hurt any of the people, and
regarding the owner's profit, thought belike he would save a saker's
shot, doubting we should have occasion to fight with men-of-war, and so
shot off the saker without a bullet, we looking still when the savages
that were hurt should run away without legs; at length we could perceive
never a man hurt, but all having their legs, could carry away their
bodies.  We had no sooner shot off the piece but the master of the
_Sunshine_ manned his boat, and came rowing towards the island, the very
sight of whom made each of them take that he had gotten, and fly away as
fast as they could to another island about two miles off, where they took
the nails out of the timber, and left the wood on the isle.  When we came
on shore, and saw how they had spoiled the boat, after much debating of
the matter, we agreed that the _Elizabeth_ should have her to fish
withal; whereupon she was presently carried aboard and stowed.  Now after
this trouble, being resolved to depart with the first wind, there fell
out another matter worse than all the rest, and that was in this manner:
John Churchyard, one whom our captain had appointed as pilot in the
pinnace, came to our captain and Master Bruton, and told them that the
good ship which we must all hazard our lives in had three hundred strokes
at one time as she rode in the harbour.  This disquieted us all greatly,
and many doubted to go in her.  At length our captain, by whom we were
all to be governed, determined rather to end his life with credit than to
return with infamy and disgrace; and so, being all agreed, we purposed to
live and die together, and committed ourselves to the ship.

Now the 21st, having brought all our things aboard, about eleven or
twelve of the clock at night we set sail and departed from those isles,
which lie in 64 degrees of latitude, our ships being now all at sea, and
we shaping our course to go coasting the land to the northwards, upon the
eastern shore, which we called the shore of our merchants, because there
we met with people which traffic with us; but here we were not without
doubt of our ship.

The 22nd and 23rd we had close fog and rain.

The 24th, being in 67 degrees and 40 minutes, we had great store of
whales, and a kind of sea-birds which the mariners call cortinous.  This
day, about six of the clock at night, we espied two of the country people
at sea, thinking at the first they had been two great seals, until we saw
their oars, glistering with the sun.  They came rowing towards us as fast
as they could, and when they came within hearing they held up their oars
and cried "Il y a oute," making many signs, and at last they came to us,
giving us birds for bracelets, and of them I had a dart with a bone in
it, or a piece of unicorn's horn, as I did judge.  This dart he made
store of, but when he saw a knife he let it go, being more desirous of
the knife than of his dart.  These people continued rowing after our ship
the space of three hours.

The 25th, in the morning, at seven of the clock, we descried thirty
savages rowing after us, being by judgment ten leagues off from the
shore.  They brought us salmon peels, birds, and caplin, and we gave them
pins, needles, bracelets, nails, knives, bells, looking-glasses, and
other small trifles; and for a knife, a nail, or a bracelet, which they
call ponigmah, they would sell their boat, coats, or anything they had,
although they were far from the shore.  We had but few skins of them,
about twenty; but they made signs to us that if we would go to the shore,
we should have more store of chicsanege.  They stayed with us till eleven
of the clock, at which time we went to prayer, and they departed from us.

The 26th was cloudy, the wind being at south.

The 27th fair, with the same wind.

The 28th and 29th were foggy, with clouds.

The 30th day we took the height, and found ourselves in 72 degrees and 12
minutes of latitude, both at noon and at night, the sun being five
degrees above the horizon.  At midnight the compass set to the variation
of 28 degrees to the westward.  Now having coasted the land which we
called London Coast from the 21st of this present till the 30th, the sea
open all to the westwards and northwards, the land on starboard side east
from us, the wind shifted to the north, whereupon we left that shore,
naming the same Hope Sanderson, and shaped our course west, and ran forty
leagues and better without the sight of any land.

_July_.--The 2nd we fell in with a mighty bank of ice west from us, lying
north and south, which bank we would gladly have doubled out to the
northwards, but the wind would not suffer us, so that we were fain to
coast it to the southwards, hoping to double it out that we might have
run so far west till we had found land, or else to have been thoroughly
resolved of our pretended purpose.

The 3rd we fell in with the ice again, and putting off from it we sought
to the northwards, but the wind crossed us.

The 4th was foggy, so was the 5th; also with much wind at north.

The 6th being very clear, we put our barque with oars through a gap in
the ice, seeing the sea free on the west side, as we thought, which
falling out otherwise, caused us to return after we had stayed there
between the ice.

The 7th and the 8th, about midnight, by God's help we recovered the open
sea, the weather being fair and calm; and so was the 9th.

The 10th we coasted the ice.

The 11th was foggy, but calm.

The 12th we coasted again the ice, having the wind at west-north-west.
The 13th, bearing off from the ice, we determined to go with the shore,
and come to an anchor, and to stay five or six days for the dissolving of
the ice, hoping that the sea from continually beating it, and the sun
with the extreme force of heat, which it had always shining upon it,
would make a quick despatch, that we might have a further search upon the
western shore.  Now when we were come to the eastern coast, the water
something deep, and some of our company fearful withal, we durst not come
to an anchor, but bore off into sea again.  The poor people, seeing us go
away again, came rowing after us into the sea, the waves being somewhat
lofty.  We trucked with them for a few skins and darts, and gave them
beads, nails, needles, and cards, they pointing to the shore as though
they would show us great friendship; but we, little regarding their
courtesy, gave them the gentle farewell, and so departed.

The 14th we had the wind at south.  The 15th there was some fault either
in the barque or the set of some current, for we were driven six points
out of our course.  The 16th we fell in with the bank of ice, west from
us.  The 17th and 18th were foggy.  The 19th, at one o'clock afternoon,
we had sight of the land which we called Mount Raleigh, and at twelve of
the clock at night we were athwart the straits which we discovered the
first year.  The 20th we traversed in the mouth of the strait, the wind
being at west with fair and clear weather.  The 21st and 22nd we coasted
the northern coast of the straits.  The 23rd, having sailed 60 leagues
north-west into the straits at two o'clock afternoon, we anchored among
many isles in the bottom of the gulf, naming the same the Earl of
Cumberland's Isles, where, riding at anchor, a whale passed by our ship
and went west in among the isles.  Here the compass set at 30 degrees
westward variation.  The 24th we departed, shaping our course south-east
to recover the sea.  The 25th we were becalmed in the bottom of the gulf,
the air being extremely hot.  Master Bruton and some of the mariners went
on shore to course dogs, where they found many graves, and trains spilt
on the ground, the dogs being so fat that they were scant able to run.

The 26th we had a pretty storm, the wind being at south-east.  The 27th
and 28th were fair.  The 29th we were clear out of the straits, having
coasted the south shore, and this day at noon we were in 64 degrees of
latitude.  The 30th in the afternoon we coasted a bank of ice which lay
on the shore, and passed by a great bank or inlet which lay between 63
and 62 degrees of latitude, which we called Lumley's Inlet.  We had
oftentimes, as we sailed along the coast, great roots, the water as it
were whirling and overfalling, as if it were the fall of some great water
through a bridge.  The 31st as we sailed by a headland, which we named
Warwick's Forehand, we fell into one of those overfalls with a fresh gale
of wind, and bearing all our sails, we looking upon an island of ice
between us and the shore, had thought that our barque did make no way,
which caused us to take marks on the shore.  At length we perceived
ourselves to go very fast, and the island of ice which we saw before was
carried very forcibly with the set of the current faster than our ship
went.  This day and night we passed by a very great gulf, the water
whirling and roaring as it were the meeting of tides.

_August_.--The 1st, having coasted a bank of ice which was driven out at
the mouth of this gulf, we fell in with the southernmost cape of the
gulf, which we named Chidlie's Cape, which lay in 6 degrees and 10
minutes of latitude.  The 2nd and 3rd were calm and foggy, so were the
4th, 5th, and 6th.  The 7th was fair and calm, so was the 8th, with a
little gale in the morning.  The 9th was fair, and we had a little gale
at night.  The 10th we had a frisking gale at west-north-west; the 11th
fair.  The 12th we saw five deer on the top of an island, called by us
Darcie's Island.  And we hoisted out our boat, and went ashore to them,
thinking to have killed some of them.  But when we came on shore and had
coursed them twice about the island they took the sea, and swain towards
islands distant from that three leagues.  When we perceived that they had
taken the sea, we gave them over, because our boat was so small that it
could not carry us and row after them, they swam so fast; but one of them
was as big as a good pretty cow, and very fat; their feet as big as
ox-feet.  Here upon this island I killed with my piece a grey hare.

The 13th in the morning we saw three or four white bears, but durst not
go on shore unto them for lack of a good boat.  This day we struck a rock
seeking for a harbour, and received a leak, and this day we were in 54
degrees of latitude.  The 14th we stopped our leak in a storm not very
outrageous at noon.

The 15th, being almost in 51 degrees of latitude, and not finding our
ships, nor (according to their promise) being any mark, token, or beacon,
which we willed to set up, and they protested to do so upon every
headland, sea, island, or cape, within 20 leagues every way off from
their fishing place, which our captain appointed to be between 54 and 55
degrees--this 15th, I say, we shaped our course homeward for England,
having in our ship but little wood, and half a hogshead of fresh water.
Our men were very willing to depart, and no man more forward than
Peerson, for he feared to be put out of his office of stewardship; he was
so insatiate that the allowance of two men was scant sufficient to fill
his greedy appetite; but because every man was so willing to depart, and
considering our want, I doubted the matter very much, fearing that the
seething of our men's victuals in salt water would breed diseases, and
being but few (yet too many for the room, if any should be sick), and
likely that all the rest might be infected therewith, we consented to
return for our own country, and so we had the 16th there with the wind at
south-west.

The 17th we met a ship at sea, and as far as we could judge it was a
Biscayan; we thought she went a-fishing for whales, for in 52 degrees or
thereabout we saw very many.

The 18th was fair with a good gale at west.

The 19th fair also, but with much wind at west and by south.

And thus, after much variable weather and change of winds, we arrived the
15th of September in Dartmouth, Anno 1587, giving thanks to God for our
safe arrival.

                                * * * * *

_A letter of the said Master John Davis_, _written to Master Sanderson of
London_, _concerning his fore-written voyage_.

    GOOD MASTER SANDERSON,--With God's great mercy I have made my safe
    return in health with all my company, and have sailed 60 leagues
    farther than my determination at my departure.  I have been in 73
    degrees, finding the sea all open, and 40 leagues between laud and
    land; the passage is most certain, the execution most easy, as at my
    coming you shall fully know.  Yesterday, the 15th of September, I
    landed all weary, therefore I pray you pardon my shortness.

    Sandridge, this 16th of September, Anno 1587.

                                            Yours equal as mine own, which
                                             by trial you shall best know,
                                                               JOHN DAVIS.

***