enemies, that move them to such
sudden fear. Their houses are very simply builded with pebble stone,
without any chimneys, the fire being made in the midst thereof. The good
man, wife, children, and other of their family, eat and sleep on the one
side of the house, and their cattle on the other, very beastly and rudely
in respect of civilisation. They are destitute of wood, their fire is
turf and cow shardes. They have corn, bigge, and oats, with which they
pay their king's rent to the maintenance of his house. They take great
quantity of fish, which they dry in the wind and sun; they dress their
meat very filthily, and eat it without salt. Their apparel is after the
nudest sort of Scotland. Their money is all base. Their Church and
religion is reformed according to the Scots. The fishermen of England
can better declare the dispositions of those people than I, wherefore I
remit other their usages to their reports, as yearly repairers thither in
their courses to and from Iceland for fish.

We departed here hence the 8th of June, and followed our course between
west and north-west until the 4th of July, all which time we had no
night, but that easily, and without any impediment, we had, when we were
so disposed, the fruition of our books, and other pleasures to pass away
the time, a thing of no small moment to such as wander in unknown seas
and long navigations, especially when both the winds and raging surges do
pass their common and wonted course. This benefit endureth in those
parts not six weeks, whilst the sun is near the tropic of Cancer, but
where the pole is raised to 70 or 80 degrees it continueth the longer.

All along these seas, after we were six days sailing from Orkney, we met,
floating in the sea, great fir trees, which, as we judged, were, with the
fury of great floods, rooted up, and so driven into the sea. Iceland
hath almost no other wood nor fuel but such as they take up upon their
coasts. It seemeth that these trees are driven from some part of the
Newfoundland, with the current that setteth from the west to the east.

The 4th of July we came within the making of Friesland. From this shore,
ten or twelve leagues, we met great islands of ice of half a mile, some
more, some less in compass, showing above the sea thirty or forty
fathoms, and as we supposed fast on ground, where, with our lead, we
could scarce sound the bottom for depth.

Here, in place of odoriferous and fragrant smells o