self, in addition to his previous subscription of 1007., supplied as much money as from time to time was needed, making in all 7387. 19s. 3d. He tells us that he helped Frobisher in all sorts of other ways. He lent him all the books, charts, maps, and instruments that he had been collecting during twenty years. He introduced him to men of influence and wisdom. "I made my house his home, my purse his purse, and my credit his credit," he says, "when he was utterly destitute both of money, and credit, and of friends."

The autumn of 1575, and the ensuing winter and spring were spent in zealous consultations and preparations. That he might be nearer to Lock's residence and to the docks in which the vessels were being fitted out, Frobisher left his lodgings in Fleet Street, and went to live at Widow Hancock's house in Mark Lane. Frequent conferences were held in the house of Alderman Bond, close by; yet more frequent were the meetings under Lock's roof, where charts were examined, plans propounded and considered, and arrangements made for the choice and fitting out of vessels, selecting of mariners and officers, and the like. Meetings were held also at Court, where Frobisher's best friend appears to have been the Earl of Warwick, who advanced him in the favour of Queen Elizabeth and the more cautious support of the great Earl of Burghley. The Court being generally held at Greenwich, statesmen and courtiers took their share in personal inspection of the arrangements for the voyage. Thus, with help from divers sources, and a good deal of advice that was by no means

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Its Preparation and Departure.

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helpful, the arrangements were completed by the end of May, 1576, and two stout little barks, the Gabriel and the Michael, each of twenty-five tons' burthen, with a small pinnace, carrying ten tons, attached to them, lay in the Thames, near to old London Bridge, ready for departure. Frobisher received his commission as admiral or captain of the expedition; Christopher Hall and Owen Griffin were appointed masters of the ships, and Nicholas Chancelor was made purser of the voyage.

The little company, numbering not more than thirtyfive or forty officers and men, started on the morning of Thursday, the 7th of June. Off Deptford, the pinnace was run down by a ship coming into port, which broke her bowsprit and foremast, and that caused a day's delay. At mid-day on Friday, the vessels passed Greenwich with a volley of ordnance and other parting show of honour to the Court. Queen Elizabeth watched them and waved her hand from a window, and then sent a messenger in a rowing boat to tell the adventurers that she had good liking of their doings and thanked them for it, and that she desired Frobisher to come next day and take his leave of her. This he did while the vessels lay at anchor, and while another messenger went on board and bade the crews, in her Majesty's name, to please her by being diligent

*RECORD OFFICE MSS., Domestic, vol. cxix., No. 32; vol. cxxix., No. 44; Cotton MSS., Otho E. viii., fols. 42, 43, 46; HAKLUYT, vol. iii., pp. 29, 57. The following details of the voyage are taken from the two accounts by Captain Hall and Captain Best in HAKLUYT, and from LOCK's Memoir, already cited-Otho E. viii, fols. 46-53.

and faithful servants to Master Frobisher and his deputies. The final leave-taking was not over till the 12th of June, and on that day Frobisher really set out on his enterprise. He sailed round the western coast of England and Scotland, and on the 25th of the month passed the Shetlands, where he halted to stop a leak in the Gabriel, and to take in fresh supplies of water. Bearing round Faroe Islands, and sailing thence due west, he had sight, on the 11th of June, of some "high and ragged land rising like pinnacles of steeples," which seems to have been the southernmost part of Greenland, then known as Friesland. There he wished to land, but was deterred from seeking a harbour by "the great store of ice that lay along the coast and the great mists that troubled them not a little."

Worse trouble befel him as he passed on towards the broken mainland and islands lying west of Greenland and north of Labrador. A great storm arose, in the course of which his pinnace disappeared, never to be heard of afterwards. Thereby he lost three men; and next day he experienced a much greater loss in the disappearance of the Michael, which was carried away by the storm. After vainly searching for their comrades, its crew sailed westward till they reached land, apparently a part of Labrador; but, we are told, "they found it so compassed with monstrous high islands of ice, that they durst not approach." Thereupon, supposing that Frobisher and the others were wrecked, they returned to England and arrived at Bristol on the 1st of September.