A DUTCH BEER-HOUSE YARN. 151 



and, later, killed some birds. Their strength returning, they equipped the smaller vessel 

 as well as they were able, and set sail on an apparently hopeless voyage, but in spite of 

 storms and other perils succeeded at length in reaching Norway, where they were received 

 as men risen from the grave. Munk must have possessed an undaunted spirit, for we 

 find him almost immediately proposing to make an attempt at the north-west passage, in 

 spite of all the sufferings he had just undergone. A subscription was raised, and a vessel 

 prepared On taking leave of the court, the king, in admonishing him to be more cautious, 

 appeared to ascribe the loss of his crew to some mismanagement. Munk replied hotly, 

 and the king, forgetting his own proper dignity, struck the brave navigator with a cane. 

 The old sailor left the presence of this unkingly king, smarting under a sense of outrage 

 which he could not forget ; and we are told that he took to his bed and died of a broken 

 heart very shortly afterwards. The story, however, is discredited by some authorities. 

 Some thirty years later Denmark again furnished an expedition, under the command of 

 Captain Danells, to explore East Greenland. He could rarely approach the ice-girt coast 

 nearer than eighteen or twenty miles, and subsequent attempts have been little more 

 successful. 



The establishment of the Hudson's Bay Company, in 1669, appears to have diverted the 

 spirit of adventure and discovery from the far north, and we hear of few voyages to the Arctic 

 at this period, and for some time afterwards, although the discovery of a northern passage to 

 the Pacific is really included in the objects for which the charter to that Corporation was 

 granted. 



One attempt at a north-eastern passage in 1676 deserves to be mentioned, princi- 

 pally on account of the circumstances which brought it about. There was a considerable 

 amount of rivalry in the East Indian, Chinese, and Japanese trade at that time, between 'the 

 Dutch and ourselves, and some reports had reached England that a company of merchants in 

 Holland was agitating the subject of a north-eastern passage to the Orient once more. 

 Further, Mr. Joseph Moxon, a Fellow of the Royal Society, had just published his " Brief 

 Discourse/' wherein he records the following story, from which he concluded "that there 

 is a free and open sea under the very pole." " Being about twenty-two years ago in 

 Amsterdam," says he, " I went into a drinking-house to drink a cup of beer for my thirst, 

 and sitting by the public fire among several people, there happened a seaman to come in, 

 who seeing a friend of his there whom he knew went in the Greenland voyage, 

 wondered to see him, because it was not yet time for the Greenland fleet to come home, 

 and asked him what accident brought him home so soon ; his friend (who was the 

 steer-man aforesaid in a Greenland ship that summer) told him that their ship went 

 not out to fish that summer but only to take in the lading of the whole fleet, and 

 bring it to an early market. But, said he, before the fleet had caught fish enough to 

 lade us, we, by order of the Greenland Company, sailed unto the north pole, and came 

 back again. Whereupon (his relation being novel to me) I entered into discourse with 

 him, and seemed to question the truth of what he said; but he did ensure me it was 

 true, and that the ship was then in Amsterdam, and many of the seamen belonging to 

 her to justify the truth of it; and told me, moreover, that they had sailed two degrees 

 beyond the Pole." The Hollander also stated that they had an open sea, free from ice, 



