THE FIRST DUTCH VOYAGE 9 



August, two days afterwards, the William parted from 

 the George in a dense fog, while Pet brought his ship 

 home and dropped anchor at Ratcliff on Boxing Day. 



The Dutch had for some time been trying to out- 

 strip the English on this route to the far east. In 

 1565 they had settled at Kola, and about thirteen 

 years afterwards had established the factory at the 

 mouth of the Dwina on the site of Nova Kholmo- 

 gory, generally known as Archangel. In 1584 Olivier 

 Brunei, their energetic emissary in Russia, sailed on 

 the first Dutch Arctic discovery expedition. He tried 

 in vain to pass through Pet Strait, and the ship, with 

 a valuable cargo of furs and mica, was wrecked on its 

 homeward voyage at the mouth of the Petchora. 



Ten years elapsed, and then there sailed from the 

 Texel the expedition of Cornelis Nai, in which the 

 Mercury, of Amsterdam, was commanded by Willem 

 Barents. Barents really Barentszoon, the son of 

 Bernard sighted Novaya Zemlya, with which his name 

 was to be thenceforth associated, on the 4th of July, 

 and coasting along its mighty cliffs, peopled with their 

 myriad seabirds, passed Cape Nassau ten days later. 

 Thence reaching 77 20', and thus improving on John 

 Davis's record for the highest north, he struggled 

 through the ice to the Orange Islands and back, some 

 twenty-five miles, during which he tacked eighty-one 

 times and thereby sailed some seventeen hundred geo- 

 graphical miles. Failing to proceed further, he came 

 south, and off Pet Strait named by the Dutchmen 

 Nassau Strait fell in with the other two ships returning 

 from their unsuccessful attempt to cross the Kara Sea. 



Next year a fleet of seven vessels under Nai left the 



