1530-1581.] in Search of a North-Eastern Passage.

247

we had in plenty," says the chronicler," but ice and fogs much against our will, if it had pleased the Lord God otherwise." For nearly three weeks they were locked in the ice, and then, abandoning the work, turned back to Vaigats, which they reached on the 15th of August. There and along the Russian coast the approach of winter bringing fresh stores of ice, caused many fresh delays. Pet arrived in England on the 26th of December. Jackman wintered in Norway and died on his way home in the following spring.*

The expedition added very little to geographical knowledge, and its failure increased the reasonable distrust that was growing in nearly all men's minds with reference to the project of a north-eastern passage to Cathay. There was quite as much reason for doubt as to the possibility of safely reaching the same district by a north-western route. But here, at any rate, was more room for enterprising search, and neither active seamen nor stay-at-home adventurers were long deterred from it by the disastrous incidents of Frobisher's third voyage. While the voyage in which it had been intended that Frobisher should make a fourth attempt was diverted from its original purpose and turned into a piratical attack upon the Spanish possessions in the southern seas, and while Frobisher himself was in disrepute by reason of the bursting of his golden bubble, schemes for carrying on the work to which he had devoted himself were as rife as ever.

BRITISH MUSEUM MSS., Cotton, Otho E., viii., fols. 67-77, and a shorter account in HAKLUYT, vol. i., pp. 445–450.

The first man of note who tried to bring them to an issue was Adrian Gilbert, a younger brother of Sir Humphrey Gilbert. In 1583 he petitioned Queen Elizabeth for permission to found a new company to be called "The Collegiate of the Fellowship of New Navigations, Atlantical and Septentrional," which, with powers to travel and settle in any hitherto unoccupied parts, was in the first instance to devote itself to the search and discovery of the north-west passage to China. That request was partly acceded to in letters patent which were issued to Adrian Gilbert, on the 6th of February, 1584. By them a "Fellowship for the Discovery of the North-West Passage" was authorised, provided that a sufficient number of such adventurers "as should venture their money and not their names" could be brought together; and as chief managers of the enterprise were named Adrian Gilbert, Walter Raleigh, and John Davis, who were "to be custom free for their proper goods, which during the space of sixty years they should bring from those lands to be discovered."*

It is probable that Adrian Gilbert himself was one more ready to venture his name than his money; and Raleigh was sufficiently occupied with his Virginian colony. Therefore the pretentious "Fellowship of New Navigations Atlantical and Septentrional" came to nothing. But John Davis was in earnest, and being deserted by his friends at Court, he found friends in the

* RECORD OFFICE MSS., Domestic, Addenda; Ibid., vol. cxxx., No. 20; HAKLUYT, vol. iii., pp. 96-98.

1583-1585.]

John Davis and his Patrons.

249

City, who enabled him, in 1585, to set out on a new Cathayan search.

Of his previous history we know nothing, save that he was known to be "a man very well grounded in the art of navigation ;" and of the steps by which his employment in this special work of navigation was brought about we know very little. He tells us himself that he had an excellent patron in Sir Francis Walsingham. But his chief supporter was a London merchant named William Sanderson, "who was so forward therein that, besides his travail, which was not small, he became the greatest adventurer with his purse." With him were associated several other merchants of London and the west of England, and especial care seems to have been taken in fitting out the expedition with suitable provisions and trustworthy men.

Two barks, the Sunshine, of 50 tons' burthen, and the Moonshine, of 35 tons, left Dartmouth on the 7th of June. In the Sunshine were Captain Davis and seventeen officers and sailors, besides four musicians, and John Jane, a merchant, who went as Sanderson's deputy, and who has written the history of the voyage.* In the Moonshine were Captain William Bruton, and eighteen others. Bad winds and weather caused three short delays, and the vessels had to put in once at Falmouth and twice by the Scilly Islands. They fairly left the English coast on the 28th of June and sailed on, amid frequent storms and fogs, for two-and-twenty days without

* HAKLUYT, vol. iii., pp. 98–103. There is also a brief memoir of the voyage by Davis himself, in HAKLUYT, vol. iii., p. 119.

seeing land. They saw, however, plenty of porpoises and whales. The porpoises Davis tried hard to capture with harpoons, with pikes, and with a boat-hook. Some were wounded, but only one, which they called a "darlie head," could be brought on board. It was cooked and "did eat as sweet as any mutton." The whales they did not attempt to catch or trouble.

66

On the 19th of July they were becalmed off the coast of Greenland, which a fog hindered them from seeing, though they heard "a mighty great roaring of the sea, as if it had been the breach of some shore." On the 20th, after sailing further northward, they passed out of the fog and beheld the shore. "The land," said Davis, was very high and full of mighty mountains, all covered with snow; no view of wood, grass, or earth to be seen, and the shore two leagues off into the sea so full of ice as that no shipping could by any means come near the same. The loathsome view of the shore and irksome noise of the ice was such that it bred strange conceits among us, so that we supposed the place to be waste and void of any sensible or vegetable creatures." "It seemed," we are also told, "to be the true pattern of desolation;" and therefore Davis fitly named it the Land of Desolation. This was not the modern Cape Desolation, but the south-eastern part of Greenland, now called Cape Discord, another apt name by reason of the contrary currents with which its coast is vexed.

Davis turned southwards and passed round Cape Farewell on the 25th of July, whence, after vainly trying to land, he directed his course towards the north