226 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA, 
[chap. 
or Hussian-Finnish navigation was carried on as early as the 
middle of the fifteenth century between the White Sea, the 
Petchora, Vaygats, and Novaya Zemlya, and that at that time the 
Kussians or Finns even sailed to the Obi. The sketch, which 
Burrough gives of the Russian or Russian-Finnish hunters, 
shows, besides, that they were brave and skilful seamen, with 
vessels which for the time were very good, and even superior to 
the English in sailing before the wind. With very few alter¬ 
ations this sketch might also be applied to the present state of 
things in these regions, which shows that they continue to stand 
at a point which was then high, but is now low. Taking a 
general view of matters, it appears as if these lands had rather 
fallen behind than advanced in well-being during the last 
three hundred years. 
To judge by a letter from the Russian Merchant Company, 
which was formed in London, it was at his own instance that 
Stephen Burrough in 1557 sailed from Colmogro, not to Obi, 
but to the coast of Russian Lapland to search for the lost 
Chancelor himself, his wife, and seven Russians were drowned, and most 
of the cargo lost. 
The Bona Esperanza, admiral of the fleet during the expedition of 1553. 
Its commander and whole crew perished, as has been already stated, of 
disease at Arzina on the coast of Kola in the beginning of 1554. The 
vessel was saved and was to have been used in 1556 to carry to England 
the Russian embassy already mentioned. After having been driven by a 
storm into the North Sea, it reached a harbour in the neighbourhood of 
Trondhjem, but after leaving that harbour disappeared complete!}", nothing 
being known of its fate. 
The Bona Confidentia was saved like the Bona Esperanza after the dis¬ 
astrous wintering at Arzina; was also used in conveying the Russian 
embassy from Archangel in 1556, but stranded on the Norwegian coast, 
every man on board perishing and the whole cargo being lost. 
Of the four vessels that left the Dwina on the 2nd August, 1556, only 
the Philip and Mary succeeded, after wintering at Trondhjem, in reaching 
the Thames on the 28th (18th) April, 1557. (A letter of Master Henrie 
Lane to the worshipfull Master William Sanderson, containing a brief 
discourse of that which passed in the north-east discoverie, for the space 
of three and thirtie yeeres, Purchas, hi. p. 249.) 
