re no ship had ever been seen before. He pointed out to
the English the way to the whale fishery at Spitzbergen, and opened up
a trade with the northern parts of Russia. Two years later, in 1556,
Stephen Burroughs sailed with one small ship, which entered the Kara
Sea; but he was compelled by frost and ice to return to England. The
strait which he entered is still called "Burrough's Strait."

It was not, however, until the reign of Elizabeth that great maritime
adventures began to be made. Navigators were not so venturous as they
afterwards became. Without proper methods of navigation, they were apt
to be carried away to the south, across an ocean without limit. In
1565 a young captain, Martin Frobisher, came into notice. At the age
of twenty-five he captured in the South Seas the Flying Spirit, a
Spanish ship laden with a rich cargo of cochineal. Four years later,
in 1569, he made his first attempt to discover the north-west passage
to the Indies, being assisted by Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick. The
ships of Frobisher were three in number, the Gabriel, of from 15 to 20
tons; the Michael, of from 20 to 25 tons, or half the size of a modern
fishing-boat; and a pinnace, of from 7 to 10 tons! The aggregate of
the crews of the three ships was only thirty-five, men and boys. Think
of the daring of these early navigators in attempting to pass by the
North Pole to Cathay through snow, and storm, and ice, in such
miserable little cockboats! The pinnace was lost; the Michael, under
Owen Griffith, a Welsh-man, deserted; and Martin Frobisher in the
Gabriel went alone into the north-western sea!

He entered the great bay, since called Hudson's Bay, by Frobisher's
Strait. He returned to England without making the discovery of the
Passage, which long remained the problem of arctic voyagers. Yet ten
years later, in 1577, he made another voyage, and though he made his
second attempt with one of Queen Elizabeth's own ships, and two barks,
with 140 persons in all, he was as unsuccessful as before. He brought
home some supposed gold ore; and on the strength of the stones
containing gold, a third expedition went out in the following year.
After losing one of the ships, consuming the provisions, and suffering
greatly from ice and storms, the fleet returned home one by one. The
supposed gold ore proved to be only glittering sand.

While Frobisher was seeking El-Dorado in the North, Francis Drake was
finding it in the South