196 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap. 



further attempts to find a north-eastern commercial route to 

 China and Japan, and this route was also now less necessary, 

 as Houtman returned with the first Dutch fleet from the East 

 Indies the same year that Barents' companions came back from 

 their wintering. The problem was therefore seriously taken up 

 anew for the first time during the present century ; though 

 during the intervening period attempts to solve it were not 

 wholly wanting. 



For the desire to extend the White Sea trade to Siberia, 

 and jealousy of the companies that had known how to procure 

 for themselves a monopoly of the lucrative commerce with 

 eastern Asia, still led various merchants now and then during 

 the seventeenth century to send out vessels to try whether it 

 was possible to penetrate beyond Novaya Zemlya. I shall 

 confine myself here to an enumeration of the most important 

 of these undertakings, with the necessary bibliographical 

 references. 



1608. Heney Hudson, during his second voyage, landed on 

 Novaya Zemlya at Karmakul Bay and other places, but did not 

 succeed in his attempt to sail further to the east, north of this 

 island. He made the voyage on account of English merchants. 

 A narrative of it is to be found in Purchas (iii. p. 574), and an 

 excellent critical collection of all the original documents 

 relating to Hudson's life and voyages in G. M. Asher's 

 Henry Hudson the Navigator, London, 1860 (Works issued by 

 the Hakluyt Society, No. 26). It was west of the Atlantic 

 that Hudson earned the laurels which gave him for all time so 

 prominent a place in the history of navigation, and the sea 

 there also became his grave. Eastwards he did not penetrate 

 so far as his predecessors. I cannot therefore here find room 

 for any account of his voyage to Novaya Zemlya ; it may 

 only be mentioned that two of his crew on the morning 

 of the ||th of June, 1608, in 75° N.L., saw a mermaid. The 

 following statement is taken from his journal : " This morning 

 one of the crew, as he looked over the side, saw a mermaid. 

 Another of his comrades came up at his call. She was 

 close to the vessel's side, looking steadily at the men. Soon 

 after she was thrown down by a wave. From the middle 

 upwards her back and breast were like a woman's. Her body 

 was as large as a man's, her skin very white, and long dark 

 hair hung down her back. When she dived, they saw her 

 tail, which resembled that of a dolphin and was spotted like 

 a mackerel's. The names of the men who saw her Avere 

 Thomas Hiller and Robert Rayner." It was probably a curious 

 seal that gave occasion to this version of the old yarn. 



1611. William Gourdon, with the title "appointed chief 

 pilote for discoverie to Ob," brought this year a cargo of goods 



