Novaya Zemlya, never before visited by West-European
seafarers.

The two other vessels, that left the Texel at the same time as
Barents, also made a remarkable voyage, specially sketched by the
distinguished voyager JAN HUYGHEN VAN LINSCHOTEN.[131]

The vessels were manned by fifty men, among them two interpreters--a
Slav, CHRISTOFFEL SPLINDLER, and a Dutch merchant, who had lived
long in Russia, FR. DE LA DALE. Provisions for eight months only
were taken on board. At first Nay and Tetgales accompanied Barents
to Kilduin, which island is delineated and described in considerable
detail in Linschoten's work.

[Illustration: JAN HUYGHEN VAN LINSCHOTEN. Born in 1563 at Haarlem,
died in 1611 at Enkhuizen. After a portrait in his work,
_Navigatio in Orientalem sive Lusitanorum Indiam_, Hagae Comitis, 1590. ]

[Illustration: KILDUIN, IN RUSSIAN LAPLAND, IN 1504. After Linschoten. ]

[Illustration: Russian Map of the North Polar Sea from the beginning of
the 17th century, published in Holland in 1612 by Isaac Massa ]

On the 12th/2nd July Nay and Tetgales sailed from Kilduin for
Vaygats Island. Three days afterwards they fell in with much
drift-ice. On the 20/10th they arrived at Toxar, according to
Linschoten's map an island on the Timan coast, a little west of the
entrance to Petchora. They there met with a Russian _lodja_, whose
captain stated that he believed, after hearsay, that the Vaygats
Sound[132] was continually covered with ice, and that, when it was
passed, men came to a sea which lay to the south of, and was warmer
than, the Polar Sea. Some other Russians added, the following day,
that it was quite possible to sail through Vaygats Sound, if the
whales and walruses, that destroy all vessels that seek to pass
through, did not form an obstacle; that the great number of rocks
and reefs scarcely permitted the passage of a vessel; and finally,
that the Grand Duke had ordered three vessels to attempt the
passage, but that they had all been crushed by ice.

On the 22nd/12th July there came to Toxar hunters from the White
Sea, who spoke another language than the Russians, and belonged to
another race of men--they were evidently Finns or Karelians. A large
number of whales were seen in the haven, which gave occasion to a
remark by Linschoten that whale-fishing ought to be profitable
there. After the ice had broken up, and crosses with inscriptions
giving information of their movements had been erected on the shore,