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only by signs, and the Russians expressed much concern at learning the loss of the Dutch ship, where they reminded the company that they had drank good wine. During thirteen months,

over the ice to the water, and after making slow progress, several of the mariners reached Cross Island, where they got a number of eggs. These proved a salutary refreshment; and at the same time, all the remain--that is, ever after the time that ing wine was shared among the Cornelisz had separated from people, affording three glasses them, the Dutchmen had never to each. The open sea was seen a human being, excepting soon obstructed; whence it was those of their own party. necessary, on the 18th of June, to unlade the boats, though this operation as well as others always became more and more irksome to the mariners from their decreasing strength; and here they were obliged to drag them no less than a thousand paces over the solid ice.

In a few days they came to Cape Caut, where they were so fortunate as to collect a great number of eggs, and to kill many birds. Twenty-two in one cliff were killed with stones, and they were so tame, never having had mankind to dread before, that they suffered themselves to be caught in their nests. Each had only a single egg deposited on the bare rock, without any straw or feathers to promote heat; and the mariners were surprised how they could breathe in such rigorous cold. At another cape they killed 125 birds. At length they reached St. Lawrence Bay, where two Russian barques lay at anchor; and they recognised the crew to be the same individuals whom they had seen the preceding year. Ignorant of each other's language, they could communicate

It was indispensable, however, to prosecute the voyage; therefore they quickly left their Russian acquaintances, and endeavoured to gain the coast of Russia. But having met other vessels belonging to the same country, they discovered that they were steering a different course from what was intended; and on narrower investigation, saw that the error arose from their compass being affected by the magnetism of iron hoops binding a chest on which it stood. Nevertheless they made Kildwyn, on the coast of Lapland, on the 25th of August, where they were civilly received at a Russian settlement.

The Russians told the mariners that some other Dutch vessels lay at Cola, not far distant, on the opposite side of a mountain; and a Laplander being procured for a guide, one of their own company was despatched thither for intelligence. But it was not without great astonishment that along with the emissary they saw John Cornelisz Ryp return, who had separated from them so long before, and whom they concluded

to have been lost with all his crew. They joyfully accompanied him to his ship lying at Cola, and thus forsook their two open boats, in which they had accomplished a dangerous voyage of 400 leagues, through icy seas and unfrequented shores. Cornelisz set sail on the 17th of September 1597, and reached Holland in safety in the end of

the following month. The twelve surviving mariners, to the admiration of the citizens of Amsterdam, appeared in their Nova Zembla apparel. The fame of their adventures was soon disseminated, and they were carried from thence, to entertain the foreign ambassadors at the Hague with a recital of what had befallen them.

CHAPTER II.

'GOD'S POWER AND PROVIDENCE SHOWED IN THE MIRACULOUS PRESERVATION AND DELIVERANCE OF EIGHT ENGLISHMEN, LEFT BY MISCHANCE IN GREENLAND, ANNO 1630, NINE MONTHS AND TWELVE DAYS;

'With a true relation of all their miseries, the shifts and hardships they were put to, their food, such as neither heathen nor Christian ever before endured. Faithfully reported by Edward Pelham, one of the eight men aforesaid.

To the Right Worshipful Sir John Merick, Governor of the Worshipful Company of Muscovy Merchants; Sir Hugh Hamersley, Knight and Alderman of the City of London; and to the Worshipful Mr. Alderman Freeman, Captain William Goodler, and to all the rest of the Worshipful assistants and adventurers in the said famous Company: Edward Pelham dedicateth both this, and his future labours.

'Right Worshipful and most famous Merchants, -The hard adventure my poor self and fellows underwent in your Worships' service, is a great deal pleasanter for others to read than it was

for us to endure. However hard, we have now endured it; and if ever after ages shall speak of it, as the world still doth of the Dutchmen's hard winter in Nova Zembla, thus much of the voyage shall redound to your honours-that it was done by your servants. This may also return to our country's good: that if the first inhabiting of a country by a prince's subjects, which is the king of Spain's best title to his Indies, doth take possession of it for their sovereign, then is Greenland, by a second right, taken livery and seisin of for his Majesty's use; his subjects being the first that ever did (and I believe the last that

ever will) inhabit there. Many a rich return may your Worships in general, and the brave adventurers in particular, receive from this and all other places; and may your servants be ever hereafter warned to take heed by our harms. God send your Worships long life and much honour, and sufficient wealth to maintain both. This is the hearty prayer of your Worships'

poor servant,

' EDWARD PELHAM.

'To the Reader. 'COURTEOUS READER,-That God may have the only glory of this our deliverance, give me leave to look back unto that voyage which the Dutchmen made into Nova Zembla, in the year 1596. In which place they have been, like ourselves, overtaken with the winter, were there forced to stay it out, as we were; which, being an action so famous all the world over, encouraged me both to publish this of ours, as also now to draw out some comparisons with them, that so our deliverance and God's glory may appear both the more gracious and the greater.

'This Nova Zembla stands in the degree 76, north latitude; our wintering place is in 77 degrees and 40 minutes, that is, almost two degrees nearer the North Pole than they were, and so much therefore the colder. The Dutch were furnished with all things necessary both for life and health: had no want of anything. Bread, beer, and wine

they had good, and good store. Victuals they had in plenty; and apparel both for present clothing, and for shift too: and all this they brought with them in their ship. We, God knows, wanted all these; bread, beer, and wine we had none. As for meat, our greatest and chiefest feeding was the whale fritters, and those mouldy too; the loathsomest meat in the world. For our venison, 'twas hard to find, but a great deal harder to get; and for our third sort of provision, the bears, 'twas a measuring cast which should be eaten first, we or the bears, when we first saw one another and we perceived by them that they had as good hopes to devour us as we to kill them. The Dutch killed bears, 'tis true, but 'twas for their skins, not for their flesh. The Dutch had a surgeon in their company; we none but the great Physician to take care of and cure us. They had the benefit of bathing and purging; we of neither. They had their ship at hand to befriend them; we had here perished, had not other ships fetched us off. They had card and compass; we no direction.

;

If the Dutch complained there of the extremity of the cold, as well they might, and that when, in building their house, they, as carpenters use to do, put the iron nails into their mouths, they there froze, and stuck so fast, that they brought off the skin, and forced blood; how cold think you

glory; and that's the author's purpose in publishing of it. God keep the readers from the like dangers. So prays he that endured what he writes of.

'EDWARD Pelham.

were we, that were forced to maintain two fires to keep our very mortar from freezing! The Dutch complained that their walls were frozen two inches thick on the inside, for all their fires; and if ours were not so, it was our pains and industry at first in building. The Dutch-in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead. Who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver; in whom we trust that He will yet deliver us."-2 COR. i. 9, 10.

men's clothes froze upon their backs, and their shoes were like horns upon their feet, but that was their own ignorance; for they had sea coals enough with them, if they had known how to use them. If their drink and sack were so hard frozen into lumps of ice, that they were forced to cut it out; how much harder was it for us, that were forced to make hot irons our best toasts to warm the snow withal, for our morning draughts! They used heated stones and billets to their feet and bodies to warm them, which, though a hard shift, yet was it better than we had any.

'Lay now all these together: the distance of place, we being many miles more into the cold than they; the want both of meat and clothes; and that the house we lived in we had but three days' respite to build for nine months to come;-and then may the world see that the Dutch had the better provisions, and we the abler bodies. therefore, the Dutchmen's deliverance was worthily accounted a wonder, ours can amount to little less than a miracle. The greater, therefore, our deliverance, the greater must be God's

If,

in ourselves, that we should not trust ""But we had the sentence of death

'Greenland is a country very far northward, situated in 77 degrees and 40 minutes,—that is, within 12 degrees and 20 minutes of the very North Pole itself. The land is wonderful mountainous; the mountains all the year long full of ice and snow; the plains in part bare in summer time. There grows neither tree nor herb in it, except scurvy grass and sorrel. The sea is as barren as the land, affording no fish but whales, sea-horses, seals, and another small fish. And thither there is a yearly fleet of English sent.

'We eight men, therefore, being employed in the service of the Right Worshipful Company of Muscovy Merchants, in the good ship called the Salutation, of London, were bound for this Greenland aforesaid, to make a voyage upon whales or sea-horse for the advantage of the merchants, and the good of the commonwealth. We set sail from London the 1st day of May 1630, and having a fair gale, we quickly left the fertile banks of England's pleasant

shores behind us. After which, setting our comely sails to this supposed prosperous gale, and ranging through the boisterous billows of the rugged seas, by the help and gracious assistance of Almighty God, we safely arrived at our desired port in Greenland, the 11th day of June following. Whereupon, having moored our ships and carried our casks ashore, we with all expedition fell to the fitting up of our shallops with all things necessary for our intended voyage. We were in company three ships, all which were then appointed by the order of our captain, Captain William Goodler, to stay at the Foreland until the 15th of July; with resolution, that if we could not by that time make a voyage according to our expectation, then to send one ship to the eastward, unto a fishing place some fourscore leagues from thence, whither, at the latter end of the year, the whales use more frequently to resort. A second of the three ships was designed for Green Harbour, a place some fifteen leagues distant to the southward, there to try her skill and fortune, if it were possible there to make a voyage. The third ship, which was the same wherein we were, was appointed to stay at the Foreland until the 20th of August. But the captain, having made a great voyage at Bell Sound, despatches a shallop towards our ship, with a command unto us to come to him at Bell

Sound aforesaid, his purpose being both to have us take in some of his train oil, as also, by joining our forces together, to make the fleet so much the stronger for the defence of the merchants' goods homeward bound, the Dunkirkers being very strong and rife at sea in those days. Upon the 8th day of August, thereupon, leaving the Foreland, we directed our course to the southward, towards Green Harbour, there to take in twenty of our men, which had out of our ship's company been sent into the lesser ship, for the furtherance of our voyage.

'But the wind being now contrary, our ship would no way lie our course. The fifteenth day being calm and clear, and our ship now in the offing some four leagues from Black Point, and about five from Maidenpaps, which is famous both for very good and for great store of venison, our master sent us eight men altogether in a shallop, for hunting and killing of some venison for the ship's provision. We thus leaving the ship, and having taken a brace of dogs along with us, and furnished ourselves with a snaphance, two lances, and a tinder-box, we directed our course towards the shore, where in four hours we arrived, the weather being at that time fair and clear, and every way seasonable to the performance of our present intentions. That day we laid fourteen tall and nimble deer

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