TEE SEA. 



and that the weather was warm. Whatever amount of truth there might be in this 

 beerhouse story, its publication had an influence at the time, and an expedition, partly 

 provided by the Government and partly by the Duke of York and several other noblemen 

 and gentlemen, was despatched at the end of May, 1676. The Speeihvell and Prosperous, 

 under the command respectively of Captains Wood and Flawes, were the vessels employed. 

 The first struck on a ledge of rocks off Nova Zembla, and Wood had scarcely time to 



MOCK SUNS. 



get the bread and carpenter's tools ashore before she went to pieces. Two of the crew 

 were lost, and the rest safely landed. They had almost concluded to attempt a boat 

 voyage, similar to that made by the brave Hollanders of Barents' third expedition, when 

 the Prosperous, attracted by a great fire which they had made on the shore, hove in sight, 

 and took them on board. The two crews reached England safely, and the voyage, in 

 the words of a distinguished writer, " seems to have closed the long list of unfortunate 

 northern expeditions in that century; and the discovery, if not absolutely despaired of, 

 by being so often missed, ceased for many years to be sought for." 



Nor did the eighteenth century open much more auspiciously. Mr. Knight, an old 

 servant of the Hudson's Bay Company, and for a long time governor of their leading 

 establishment on Nelson's River, had learned from the Indians that in the extreme 



