ought with him that which was sure to
pave the way to future voyages. This was a piece of
glittering stone, which the ignorant goldsmiths of London
confidently declared to be ore of gold.

Frobisher's first voyage had been delayed by the great
difficulty in obtaining aid. For his new project assistance
was freely offered, Queen Elizabeth herself, moved by hope
of treasure, coming to his help with a hundred and
eighty-ton craft, the "Ayde," to which two smaller vessels
were added. These being provisioned and manned, the bold
navigator, with "a merrie wind" in his sails, set out again
for the desolate north.

His first discovery here was of the strait now known by his
name, up which he passed in a boat, with the mistaken notion
in his mind that the land bounding the strait to the south
was America, and that to the north was Asia. The natives
proved friendly, but Frobisher soon succeeded in making them
hostile. He seized some of them and attempted to drag them
to his boat, "that he might conciliate them by presents."
The Eskimos, however, did not approve of this forcible
method of conciliation, and the unwise knight reached the
boat alone, with an arrow in his leg.

But, to their great joy, the mariners found plenty of the
shining yellow stones, and stowed abundance of them on their
ships, deeming, like certain Virginian gold-seekers of a
later date, that their fortunes were now surely made. They
found also "a great dead fish, round like a porepis
[porpoise], twelve feet long, having a Horne of two yardes,
lacking two ynches, growing out of the Snout, wreathed and
straight, like a Waxe-Taper, and might be thought to be a
Sea-Unicorne. It was reserved as a Jewell by the Queens'
commandment in her Wardrobe of Robes."

A northwest wind having cleared the strait of ice, the
navigators sailed gayly forward, full of the belief that the
Pacific would soon open to their eyes. It was not long
before they were in battle with the Eskimos. They had found
European articles in some native kyacks, which they supposed
belonged to the men they had lost the year before. To
rescue or revenge these unfortunates, Frobisher attacked the
natives, who valiantly resisted, even plucking the arrows
from their bodies to use as missiles, and, when mortally
hurt, flinging themselves from the rocks into the sea. At
length they gave ground, and fled to the loftier cliffs,
leaving two of their women as trophies to the assailants.
These two, one