1556. CHANCELOR AND Bo ivour^ H. 75 



heaps of ice. But on the 25th they fell in with an 

 object which seems to have inspired greater terror 

 even than the ice. It was the first whale that our 

 navigators had met with, and the impression it 

 made on the crew is rather amusing. " On St. 

 James his day, bolting to the windewardes, we 

 had the latitude at noon in seventy degrees, 

 twentie minutes. The same day, at a south-west 

 sunne, there was a monstrous whale aboord of us, 

 60 neere to our side that we might have thrust a 

 sworde or any other weapon in him, which we 

 durst not doe for feare hee should have over- 

 throwen our shippe ; and then I called my com- 

 pany together, and all of us shouted, and with the 

 crie that we made he departed from us ; there was 

 as much above water of his backe as the bredth 

 of our pinnesse, and at his falling downe he made 

 such a terrible noise in the water, that a man would 

 greatly have marvelled, except he had known the 

 cause of it ; but, God be thanked, we were quietly 

 delivered of him.'"^ 



The same day they came to an island which 

 they named James's Island, Here they met with 

 a Russian who had seen them at Cola, and who 

 told them that the land a head x)f them was called 

 Nova Zembla, or the New Land. On the Slst 

 they reached the island of JVeigats. Here they 

 had intercourse with several Russians, and learned 



* Hakluyt's English Voyages, vol. i. p. 280. 



