re still at any
time . . . there followed most vile, thicke and stinking fogges against
which the sea prevailed nothing {169} . . . to go further North, the
extremity of the cold would not permit us and the winds directly bent
against us, having once gotten us under sayle againe, commanded us to
the Southward whether we would or no.

"From the height of 48 degrees in which now we were to 38, we found the
land by coasting alongst it, to be but low and plaine--every hill
whereof we saw many but none were high, though it were in June, and the
sunne in his nearest approach . . . being covered with snow. . . . In
38 deg. 30 min. we fell with a convenient and fit harborough and June
17 came to anchor therein, where we continued till the 23rd day of July
following . . . neither could we at any time in whole fourteen days
together find the aire so cleare as to be able to take the height of
sunne or starre . . . after our departure from the heate we always
found our bodies, not as sponges, but strong and hardened, more able to
beare out cold, though we came out of the excesse of heate, then
chamber champions could hae beene, who lye in their feather beds till
they go to sea.

". . . Trees without leaves, and the ground without greennes in these
months of June and July . . . as for the cause of this extremity, they
seem . . . chiefest we conceive to be the large spreading of the Asian
and American continent, which (somewhat Northward of these parts) if
they be not fully joyned, yet seeme they to come very neere one to the
other. From whose high and snow-covered mountains, the North and
Northwest winds (the constant visitants of those coasts) send abroad
their frozen nimphes, to the infecting of the whole aire with this
insufferable sharpnesse. . . . Hence comes the generall squalidnesse
and barrennesse of the countrie, hence comes it that in the midst of
their summer, the snow hardly departeth . . . from their hils at all,
hence come those thicke mists and most stinking fogges, which increase
so much the more, by how much higher the pole is raised . . . also from
these reasons we coniecture that either there is no passage at all
through these Northern coasts which is most likely or if there be, that
yet it is unnavigable. . . . Add here unto, that though we searched
the coast diligently, even unto the 48 degree, yet found we not the
land to trend so much as one point in any place towards the East, but
rather running on con