].] GUSTAF VASA AND THE NORTH-EAST PASSAGE. 
.07 
says:—“When I was in Sweden twenty-two years ago, King 
Gustaf often talked with me about this sea route. At last he 
urged me to undertake a voyage in this direction, and promised 
to fit out two vessels with all that was necessary for a protracted 
voyage, and to man them with the most skilful seamen, who 
should do what I ordered. But I replied that I preferred 
journeys in inhahitated regions to the search for new unsettled 
lands.” ^ If Gustaf Vasa had found a man fit to carry out 
his great plans, it might readily have happened that Sweden 
would have contended with England for the honour of opening 
the long series of expeditions to the north-east,^ 
England’s navigation is at present greater beyond comparison 
than that of any other country, but it is not of old date. In the 
middle of the sixteenth century it was still very inconsiderable, 
and mainly confined to coast voyages in Europe, and a few 
fishing expeditions to Iceland and Newfoundland,^ The great 
^ Hubert! Laugueti Epistolcc Secretw, Halee, 1699, i. 171. Compare also 
a paper by A. G. Ahlquist, in Ny Illustrerad Tidnwg for 1875, p, 270. 
2 The first to incite to voyages of discovery in the polar regions was 
an Englishman, Robert Thorne, who long lived at Seville. Seeing all other 
countries were already discovered by Spaniards and Portuguese, he urged 
Henry VIIT. in 1527 to undertake discoveries in the north. After reaching 
the Pole (going sufficiently far north) one could turn to the east, and, first 
passing the land of the Tartars, get to China and so to Malacca, the East 
Indies, and the Cape of Good Hope, and thus circumnavigate the whole 
world.” One could also turn to the west, sail along the back of New¬ 
foundland, and return by the Straits of Magellan (Richard Hakluyt, The 
Principael Navigations, Vciages, and Discoveries of the English Nation, dec., 
London, 1589, p. 250). Two years before, Paulus Jovius, on the ground 
of communications from an ambassador from the Russian Czar to Pope ' 
Clement VII., states that Russia is surrounded on the north by an immense 
ocean, by which it is possible, if one keeps to the right shore, and if no 
land comes between, to sail to China. (Pauli Jovii Opera Ommn, Basel, 
1578, third part, p. 88 ; the description of Russia, inserted there under the 
title “ Libellus de legatione Basilii ad Clementem VII.,” was printed for 
the first time at Rome in 1525.) 
^ In the year 1540, London, exclusive of the Royal Navy, had no more 
than four vessels, whose draught exceeded 120 tons (Anderson, Origin of 
Commerce, London, 1787, vol. ii. p. 67). Most of the coast towns of 
