170 LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. [XI. 



guidance. Nothing can be more pious than the spirit in 

 which this ancient document is conceived; expressly enjoin- 

 ing that morning and evening prayers should be offered on 

 board every ship attached to the expedition, and that neither 

 dicing, carding, tabling, nor other devilish devices — were to 

 be permitted. Here and there were clauses of a more ques- 

 tionable morality, — recommending that natives of strange 

 lands be "enticed on board, and made drunk with your 

 beer and wine ; for then you shall know the secrets of their 

 hearts." The whole concluding with an exhortation to all 

 on board to take especial heed to the devices of " certain 

 creatures, with men's heads, and the tails of fishes, who swim 

 with bows and arrows about the fiords and bays, and live on 

 human flesh." 



On the nth of May the ill-starred expedition got under 

 way from Deptford, and saluting the king, who was then 

 lying sick at Greenwich, put to sea. By the 30th of July 

 the little fleet — three vessels in all — had come up abreast of 

 the LorToden islands, but a gale coining on, the " Esperanza " 

 was separated from the consorts. Ward-huus — a little har- 

 bour to the east of the North Cape — had been appointed 

 as the place of rendezvous in case of such an event, but 

 unfortunately, Sir Hugh overshot the mark, and wasted all 

 the precious autumn time in blundering amid the ice to the 

 eastward. At last, winter set in, and they were obliged to 

 run for a port in Lapland. Here, removed from all human 

 aid, they were frozen to death. A year afterwards, the ill- 

 fated ships were discovered by some Russian sailors, and an 

 unfinished journal proved that Sir Hugh and many of his 

 companions were still alive in January, 1554. 



The next voyage of discovery in a north-east direction 

 was sent out by Sir Francis Cherie, alderman of London, in 

 1603. After proceeding as far east as Ward-huus and Kela, 

 the " Godspeed" pushed north into the ocean, and on the 

 1 6th of August fell in with Bear Island. Unaware of its 

 previous discovery by Barentz, Stephen Bennet — who com- 

 manded the expedition — christened the island Cherie Island, 



