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meagre; they are far less full, and therefore less interesting, than the narratives of the men, hardly his equals, who followed on the same path. We have what may be called the log-book of the ship, and the brief narrative drawn up by Mr. Best, or Beast, as he stands on the ship's registers, who sailed in the expedition. There is further a MS. in the Cottonian Collection in the British Museum, now unhappily much damaged by fire, in the handwriting of one Michael Lok, who advanced £800 out of the £2,400 which the expedition cost. In that MS. there is a little anecdote of Frobisher, which is invaluable as a revelation of the man's character, and of the extent to which his modest but daring spirit held the mastery over the crew.

"On the 13th July, in the rage of an extreme storm, the vessel was cast flat on her side, and being open in the waste, was filled with water, so as she lay still for sunk, and would neither wear nor steer with any help of the helm, and could never have risen again but by the marvellous work of God's great mercy to help them all. In this distress, when all the men in the ship had lost their courage, and did dispayr of life, the captain, lyke himself, with valiant courage stood up, and passed alongst the ship's side in the chain wales, lying on her flat side, and caught hold on the weather leech of the forsail, but in the wether coyling of the ship the foryard brake. To ease her the mizen-mast was cut away, but she still rolled heavily, so that the water issued from both sides, though withal without anything floating over. Soon the poor storm-buffeted bark was put before the sea, and all hands were set to work to repair damages.'

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Hakluyt adds another anecdote to the same effect, under the date September 7th:-" We had a very terrible storm, by force whereof one of our men was thrown into the sea, but he caught hold of the foresail sheet, and there held till the captain plucked him in again.” A true captain; if anything was to be done, he was the man to do it; if any peril was to be met, he was the man to face it; if any honour was to be claimed, he was the last to challenge it. There is something almost sublime in the courage and conduct of the captain of that little boat, standing on through storm and ice into the bosom of those unknown Arctic seas. "The worthy captain, notwithstanding these discomforts, though the mast was sprung and the topmast blown overboard with extreme stress of weather, continued his course to the N.W.; believing the sea must needs at length have an ending, and that some land should have a beginning that way; and determined, therefore, at least to bring a true proof what land and sea the same might be, so far N.-Westwards, beyond any that hath ever been discovered." He stood on to some purpose across the mouth of the straits, to which John Davis was so soon to give his name, and struck the American coast in lat. 62 deg. 30 min: Working up to 63 deg. 8 min., he found himself at the mouth of an inlet, a great gut, bay, or passage," which he entered joyfully, believing that the Western Passage was found to Cathay. "This place he named after himself, Frobisher's Straits, like as Magellanus in the S. W. end of the world, having discovered the passage to the South Sea, where America is divided from the continent of that land which lieth under the South Pole, and called the same Magel

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lan's Straits." He sailed 60 leagues up the inlet, which was afterwards, through a kind of blunder, rebaptized by the name of Lumley, and found that the difficulties of the navigation increased as he advanced. At the extreme point where he landed he fell in with a "salvage people," whom he likens to Tartars in appearance. They used canoes made of seal skins, with a kind of wood within the skin, and in shape in some respect resembling the shallops of Spain. "One of the natives, after a boat with five men had been captured by treachery, was caught by a stratagem, whereupon when he found himself in captivity, for very choler and disdain, he bit his tongue in twain between his mouth; notwithstanding he died not thereof, but lived until he came to England, and then died of cold which he had taken at sea." The summer being far spent, Frobisher having collected much valuable information for the guidance of future expeditions, resolved to return. He weighed from the mouth of the straits on the 26th of August, and made Harwich safely on the 2nd of October.

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He was received in England with distinguished honours. was highly commended of all men for his great and notable attempt, but specially famous for the great hope he brought of the passage to Cataya." But happily for discovery, something more precious than even the spices of Cathay seemed to be likely to rise out of the expedition, and led to its renewal the following year.

There are two versions of this curious story; which shows how our ancestors found, as we find, the great magnet of migration to be gold. One account of it is in Hakluyt, and runs thus:-The sailors of course brought home with them all kinds of curious things from these unknown regions, and among these curiosities were some pieces of stone "like sea cole in colour." The wife of one of the sailors by chance threw one of these pieces on the fire, and when it became heated quenched it with vinegar, "when it glistened with a bright marquesett of gold." Then it was given to the gold refiners, who assayed it and reported it to be "gold ore, and very rich for the quantity." The other version of the story is Lok's. He says in the MS. above referred to, that he obtained a piece on board Frobisher's ship, and took it at once to a refiner, who gave a bad report of it. Lok, however, (apparently resolved to find gold in it) took a piece of the ore to one John Baptista Agnello, who proved more accommodating, and found gold three several times; a grain of which it would seem Lok delivered to Her Majesty. Great excitement arose thereupon. But there was no insane rush to the goldfields. Men did not mob in those days as they do now. There is a staid and deliberate deportment in the men of all classes, which shows "the man" in grand contrast to those gregarious families of the brute creation, to which in these days he seems to esteem it an honour to be conformed. Still there was reasonable energy and haste. Three ships were furnished at a cost of £4,400, of which zealous poor Michael Lok, if his wailings" from the Fleete Pryson in London" are credible, was left to make up £1,400. A royal ship

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this time-the Aid, of 200 tons burden-carried Frobisher with 100 persons, 'thirty gentlemen and soldiers, and the rest sufficient and talle sailors." Our old friend the Gabriel, carried 18, and the Michael, 16 men.

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They left Blackwall on the 26th of May. Frobisher, having kissed Her Majesty's hand, was dismissed by her with "gracious countenance and comfortable words. On the 27th, at Gravesend, aboard the Ayde, we all received the communion by the minister of Gravesend, and prepared us, as good Christians towards God, and resolute men, for all fortunes; and towards night we departed unto Tilburie Hope." On the 7th of June they touched at the Orkneys, of which the captain gives a graphic but dismal picture. He says, "the inhabitants were very beastly, and rudely in respect of civility; their houses are poor without, and sluttish enough within, and the people in nature thereunto agreeable." However, they were a canny people then as now. Frobisher says, with a sly touch of humour, 'yet they are not ignorant of the value of our coine." On the 16th of July they were off the mouth of the straits, where they remained till the 23rd of August. On the way Frobisher made the sagacious observation that the ice mountains, which they passed, the size of which filled them with amazement, "were bred in the sounds, or some land near the pole; and that the main sea never freezeth, wherefore there is no mare glaciale, as the opinion hitherto hath been." They occupied the time while in the straits, not in pushing discovery, but in searching for gold ore, Frobisher being expressly directed by his commission, "to search for the ore, and defer the discovery of the passage till another time"- -a direction which, like a brave and loyal captain, he implicitly obeyed. In his former expedition he had lost five men and a boat through the treachery of the Esquimaux. He was deeply anxious to get news of them, and used all kinds of stratagems to entrap the wary natives, but with small success.

"At our first arrival, after the ships rode at anchor, our generall, with such company as could be spared the ships, in marching order entered the land, having special care, by exhortation, that on our entrance thereto 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 we, in this order, took possession of the country, and, thirdly, that by our Christian study and endeavour these barbarous peoples, trained up in paganism and infidelity, might be reduced to the knowledge of true religion and the hope of salvation through Christ the Redeemer."

"In the name of God,

Thus they took possession of the country. Amen," meant something on those men's lips. The place where they landed they named " Mount Warwicke.' As they returned to their boats they saw some natives, who, with cries like the roaring of bulls, seemed to desire conference. With due circumspection, Frobisher and another met two of the natives, one of whom, for lack of better merchandise, "cut off the tail of his coat, and gave it to the general.” The general tried to seize him, but he was too

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nimble, and escaped. Regaining their bows and arrows, they shot, and wounded the poor general ignominiously in the rear. A general skirmish ensued the savages fled-when an Englishman, one "Nicholas Conger, a goode footman, and unencumbered with any furniture, having only a dagger at his back, overtook one of them, and being a Cornish man, and a good wrestler, showed his companion such a Cornish tricke, that he made his sides ake against the ground for a month after, and so being stayed, he was taken alive, and brought away." Frobisher, to his great sorrow, could learn nothing of his men. They then stood over the straits to search for ore, and they found something which looked like it; but, on trial, discovered the truth of the proverb, "That all is not gold that glittereth." Farther on, however, they found a substance which gave them greater hope; and also a dead fish, having a horn two yards long, which being, of course, the unicorn's, they brought home, "and reserved as a jewel for the Queen's wardrobe." The floating ice in the strait greatly troubled them; "whoso maketh navigation in those countrys, hath not only storms, winds, and furious seas to encounter, but also many monstrous and great islands of ice, a thing both rare, wonderful, and greatly to be regarded." In a place which they called York Sound, there was further skirmishing with the natives, and two women were seized. "The one being old and ugly, our men thought she had been a devil, or some witch, and her buskins were pulled off to see if she had cloven feet or no." Being comforted on that head, "they let her go, seeing she was old, and of an ugly hue." The other was young, with an infant at her back. The infant was wounded in the skirmish, and the surgeon applied salves. The woman, "not acquainted with that kind of surgery, plucked those salves away, "and exhibited a pretty kind of surgery which nature teacheth," and, "by continual licking of her own tongue, not much unlike a dog, she healed up the child's arm." The two captives were brought together. The narrative of their demeanour to each other is very touching. They marked them well, and were struck with the woman's singular modesty and propriety; a modesty which, as Christian gentlemen, they had the manliness to respect, in notable and noble contrast to the habits of the early adventurers of Spain. From them Frobisher heard that his men were alive, and he wrote a letter-the first correspondence of the Arctic regions-which he sent on shore, hoping that by some good chance it might fall in their way. Here it is word for word.

"In the name of God, in whom we all believe, who (I trust) hath preserved your bodies and souls among these infidels, I commend me unto you. I will be glad to seek by all means you can devise for your deliverance, either with force or with any commodities within my ships, which I will not spare for your sakes, or anything else I can do for you. I have aboard of theirs a man, a woman, and a child, which I am contented to deliver for you, but the man which I carried away from hence last year is dead in England. Moreover, you may declare unto them that if they deliver you not, I will not leave a man alive in their country. And thus if one of you can come to speak with me, they shall have either the

man, woman, or child in power for you; and thus unto God, whom I trust you do serve, in haste I leave you, and to Him we will daily pray for you. Th s Tuesday morning, 7th Aug., 1577."

The men, however, never appeared; and the season being far spent, and 200 tons of ore being on board, the general resolved to make good his return. "Forty gentlemen asked to march up and survey the country," but Frobisher, "well considering the time he had on hand, and the greedy desire our country hath to a present return of gain, resolved to return, and leave the rest to be, by God's help, hereafter well accomplished." On the 22nd of August, "making a bonfire on the highest mount in the island, and firing a volley in honour of Lady Anne, Countess Warwicke, whose name it beareth" you see here the hearty and jovial spirit of the Englishthey weighed for home. They had a trying and stormy passage. On the 1st of September, the Aid, "lying a-lull," in order not to outstrip her consorts, was most grievously buffeted with the waves. "Afraid of being swamped, they got her before the wind, and ran. The next day being calm, they found the rudder was reft in twaine, and almost ready to fall away." Dismayed by this discovery, they braced their energies to repair the loss. They "flung half-a-dozen couple of the best men overboard, who, taking great pains, under water, driving planks, and binding with ropes, did well mend and strengthen the matter, though the most part returned more than half dead out of the water." This was the last severe trial. On the 23rd September the Aid made Milford Haven, the Gabriel made Bristol, the Michael, some northern port, with the loss of one man by sickness, and one man washed overboard, of which the night before he had a strange premonition in a dream.

"The 30th of August, with the force of the wind, and a surge of the sea, the master of the Gabriel, and the boatswain, were stricken both overboard; and hardly was the boatswain recovered, having hold on a rope hanging overboard in the sea; and yet the bark was laced fore and after, with ropes a breast high within boorde. This master was called William Smith, being but a young man, and a very sufficient mariner, who, being all the morning before exceeding pleasant, told his captain he dreamed that he was cast overboard, and that the boatswain had him by the hand, and could not save him. And so, immediately upon the end of his tale, his dreame came right euilly to passe; and indeed the boatswain, in like sort, held him by one hand, hauing hold on rope with the other vntill his force fayled, and the master was drowned."

Frobisher hastened overland to Court, where he was received with great honour and joy. "The Queen delighted to find that the matter of the gold ore had appearance, and made show of great riches and profit, and the hope of the passage to Cataya by this voyage greatly increased." This was the report of a special commission appointed to investigate the subject. The Queen gave the name of "Meta incognita" to the newly discovered country, and it was resolved to send out an expedition in the ensuing year, thoroughly furnished for the establishment of a colony there.

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