262 DISCOVERIES OF 16?^. 



pany of merchants in Holland for the purpose of 

 making northern discoveries ; it stated that the 

 ship employed in this voyage had brought back an 

 account of her having sailed to the north-eastward 

 of Nova Zembla several hundred leagues, between 

 the parallels of 70° and 80°; and that the sea in 

 that direction was found to be perfectly open and 

 free from ice ; that, in consequence of the naviga- 

 tion of this part of the Tartarian Sea being so 

 easy and uninterrupted, and the passage to China 

 by that route so nearly certain, these merchants 

 had solicited the States-General for a charter, by 

 which the advantages that would result from the 

 discovery of a north-east passage to the Indian 

 seas should be secured exclusively to the adventu- 

 rers ; which however was refused through the in- 

 trigues and representations of the Dutch East India 

 Company, to whom already an exclusive charter 

 had been granted.* About this time also there was 

 a very current report of several Dutch ships having 

 circumnavigated Spitzbergen, and that they found 

 the sea open on all sides of it; and another story, 

 equally current, was, that it had been discovered, 

 in searching the journals of Dutch whalers, that, 

 in the year 1655, a certain ship had proceeded to 

 within one degree of the north pole ; and that, on 

 three different journals which were kept in the same 

 ship being produced, they all agreed as to an ob-r 



* Philosophical Transactions. 1675. 



