216 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
known for a thousand years back, not only to wandering Lapps, 
but also to Norwegians and Quaens, the lands round Yugor 
Schar and Vaygats were known several centuries before Bur- 
rough’s time, not only to the nomad Samoyeds on the main¬ 
land, but also to various Beorma or Finnish tribes. Probably 
the Samoyeds then, as now, drove their reindeer herds up 
thither to pasture on the grassy plains along the coast of the 
Polar Sea, where they were less troubled by the mosquito and 
the reindeer fly than further to the south, and probably the wild 
nomads were accompanied then, as now, by merchants from the 
more civilised races settled in Northern Russia. The name 
Novaya Zemlya (New Land), indicates that it was discovered 
at a later period, probably by Russians, but we know neither 
when nor how.^ The narrative of Stephen Burrough’s voyage, 
which, like so many others, has been preserved from oblivion 
by Hakluyt’s famous collection, thus not only forms a sketch 
of the first expedition of West-Europeans to Novaya Zemlya, 
but is also the principal source of our knowledge of the earliest 
Russian voyages to these regions. I shall on this account go 
into greater detail in the case of this voyage than in those of 
the other voyages that will be referred to here. 
It is self-evident that the new important commercial treaties, 
to which Chancelor’s discovery of the route from England to 
the White Sea led, would be hailed with great delight both 
in England and in Russia, and would give occasion to a number 
of new undertakings. At first, as early as 1555, there was 
formed in England a company of '' merchant adventurers of 
1 The Kiissian chronicles state that the land between the Dwina and the 
Petchora (Savolotskaja Tcliiid) was made tributary under the Slavs in 
Novgorod during the first half of the ninth century. A monastery is 
spoken of in the beginning of the twelfth century at the mouth of the 
Dwina, whence we may conclude that the land was even then partly 
peopled by Russians, but we want trustworthy information as to the time 
when the Russian-Finnish Arctic voyages began (compare F. Litke, Vier- 
malige Reise durch das nordliche Eismeer. Berlin, 1835, p. 3). 
