Davis to find the North-West Passage
the English search for Cathay came to an end for the present. But the
merchants of Amsterdam took up the search, and in 1594 they fitted
out an expedition under William Barents, a burgher of Amsterdam and
a practical seaman of much experience. The three voyages of Barents
form some of the most romantic reading in the history of geographical
discovery, and the preface to the old book compiled for the Dutch after
the death of Barents sums up in pathetic language the tragic story
of the "three Voyages, so strange and wonderful that the like hath
never been heard of before." They were "done and performed three
years," says the old preface, "one after the other, by the ships of
Holland, on the North sides of Norway, Muscovy, and Tartary, towards
the kingdoms of Cathay and China, showing discoveries of the Country
lying under 80 degrees: which is thought to be Greenland; where never
any man had been before, with the cruel Bears and other Monsters of
the sea and the unsupportable and extreme cold that is found to be
in these places. And how that in the last Voyage the Ship was enclosed
by the Ice, that it was left there, whereby the men were forced to
build a house in the cold and desert country of Nova Zembla, wherein
they continued ten months together and never saw nor heard of any man,
in most great cold and extreme misery; and how after that, to save
their lives, they were constrained to sail about one thousand miles
in little open boats, along and over the main Seas in most great danger
and with extreme labour, unspeakable troubles, and great hunger."

Surely no more graphic summary of disaster has ever appeared than these
words penned three hundred and fourteen years ago, which cry to us
down the long, intervening ages of privation and suffering endured
in the cause of science.

[Illustration: A SHIP OF THE LATE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. From Ortelius,
1598.]

In the year 1594, then, four ships were sent forth from Amsterdam with
orders to the wise and skilful pilot, William Barents, that he was
to sail into the North Seas and "discover the kingdoms of Cathay and
China." In the month of July the Dutch pilot found himself off the
south coast of Nova Zembla, whence he sailed as the wind pleased to
take him, ever making for the north and hugging the coast as close
as possible. On 9th July they found a creek very far north to which
they gave the name of Bear Creek, because here they suddenly