230 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[CFIAP. 
the George anchored in Tana Fiord, on which there was 
a town named Hungon.^ Two days afterwards the George 
doubled the North Cape, and on the again anchored 
at Ratcliffe. 
Pet and Jackman were the first north-east explorers who 
ventured themselves in earnest amongst the drift-ice. In 
navigating among ice they showed good judgment and readiness 
of resource, and in the history of navigation the honour falls 
to them of having commanded the first vessels from Western 
Europe that forced their way into the Kara Sea. It is there¬ 
fore without justification that Bareow says of them that they 
were but indifferent navigators.^ 
With Pet and Jackman’s voyage the English North-east 
Passage expeditions were broken off for a long time. But the 
problem was, instead, taken up with great zeal in Holland. 
Through the fortunate issue of the war of freedom with Spain, 
and the incitement to enterprise which civil freedom always 
brings along with it, Holland, already a great industrial and 
commercial state, had begun, towards the close of the sixteenth 
century, to develop into a maritime power of the first rank. 
But navigation to India and China was then rendered impossible 
for the Dutch, as for the English, by the supremacy of Spain 
and Portugal at sea, and through the endeavours of these 
countries to retain the sole right to the commercial routes they 
had discovered. In order to become sharers in the great profits 
which commerce with the land of silks and perfumes brought 
with it, it therefore appeared to be indispensable to discover 
a new sea route north of Asia or America to the Eastern seas. 
and judicious rules that were drawn up for the expedition {Ilalduyt^ 1st 
Edition, p. 406). 
^ I have not been able to find any name resembling this on modern 
maps. 
- A Chronological History of Voyages into the Arctic Regions. London, 
1818, p. 99. 
