142 THE SEA. 



And so it went on for forty-four days, until, in St. Laurence Bay, behind a projecting 

 point, they suddenly came on two Russian vessels with which they had met the previous 

 year, and the crews of which wondered to see them in their present plight, " so leane and 

 bare" and broken down. They exchanged courtesies, and provided them with a trifling 

 supply of rye bread and smoked fowls, then sailing away on their own affairs. For thirty- 

 five days longer they sailed westward, repeating many of their previous experiences, till 

 at length, on September 2nd, they arrived at Kola, in Russian Lapland, and their 

 troubles were really over. Cornelison's ship happened to be in the port, and they rejoiced 

 and made merry with their old companions, who had long given them up for lost. 



Thus ended this remarkable voyage of nearly eighty days in two small open boats. 

 It would seem nowadays utter madness to think of making a long voyage in such frail 

 and unsuitable craft, and our adventurers had had the special perils of the Arctic seas 

 superadded to the more ordinary dangers of the ocean. Eight weeks later they were 

 enjoying the calm pleasures of their own firesides, after having been entertained at the 

 Hague by the Prince of Orange. 



A further interest attaches to the voyage from the recent discovery made by Captain 

 Carlsen, while circumnavigating Nova Zembla, of the very house erected at Ice Haven by 

 these adventurers, with many interesting relics, which had remained in tolerable preser- 

 vation, and had been evidently un visited for this great length of time. "No man/' says 

 Mr. Markham, " had entered the lonely dwelling where the famous discoverer of Spitzbergen 

 had sojourned during the long winter of 1596 for nearly three centuries. There stood 

 ihe cooking-pans over the fireplace, the old clock against the wall, the arms, the tools, the 

 drinking- vessels, the instruments, and the books that had beguiled the weary hours of that 

 long night, 278 years ago. . . . Perhaps the most touching is the pair of small shoes. 

 There was a little cabin-boy among the crew, who died, as Gerrit de Veer tells us, during 

 ihe winter. This accounts for the shoes having been left behind. There is a flute, too, 

 once played by that poor boy, which will still give out a few notes." * The relics brought 

 home by Carlsen were eventually taken to the Hague, where they are now preserved with 

 jealous care. 



In chronological order, a voyage of which there is little record left comes next. There 

 is little doubt that William Adams who, afterwards cast away on the coast of Japan, is 

 inseparably connected with the history of that country, and whose adventures will be con- 

 sidered in the proper place did, in 1595 or 1596, make an attempt at the north-east passage. 

 The Prince of Orange had ordered him to try for a northern route to Japan, China, and the 

 Moluccas, considering that it would be shorter, and safer from the attacks of the pirates and 

 corsairs who infested the more southern seas. Adams averred that he had reached 82 N., 

 but that " the cold was so excessive, with so much sleet and snow driving down those straits, 

 that he was compelled to return." And he asserted that if he had kept close to the coast 

 of Tartary, and had run along it to the eastward, to the opening of Anian, between the 

 land of Asia and America, he might have succeeded in his undertaking. 



* " Discoveries East of Spitzbergen," &c. Paper read before the Royal Geographical Society by C. R. 

 Markham, Esq., C.B., F.R.S., February 10th, 1873. 



