to sail up along the east coast of Spitzbergen, and that,
when this was found to be impossible, he returned home the same
autumn.

After the two boats, in which Barents' companions had travelled with
so many dangers and difficulties from their winter haven to Russian
Lapland, had been left in the merchant's yard[143] at Kola, as a
memorial of the journey--the first memorial of a Polar expedition
was thus raised at Kola--they went on board Rijp's vessel, and
sailed in it to Holland, arriving there the 8th November/29th
October. Sixteen men had left Holland with Barents, twelve men
returned in safety to their native land, and among them JACOB VAN
HEEMSKERK, a man who during the whole voyage had played a prominent
part, and afterwards lived long enough to see the time when the
Dutch were a match at sea for the Spaniards. For he fell as
commander of the Dutch fleet which defeated the Spanish at Gibraltar
on April 25, 1607.

[Illustration: JACOB VAN HEEMSKERK. Born in 1567 at Amsterdam,
died in 1607 at Gibraltar After a contemporary engraving by N.
de Clerck. ]

During Barents' third voyage Bear Island and Spitzbergen were
discovered, and the natural conditions of the high northern regions
during winter first became known. On the other hand, the unfortunate
issue of the maritime expeditions sent out from Holland appears to
have completely deterred from farther attempts to find a
north-eastern commercial route to China and Japan, and this route
was also now less necessary, as Houtman returned with the first
Dutch fleet from the East Indies the same year that Barents'
companions came back from their wintering. The problem was therefore
seriously taken up anew for the first time during the present
century; though during the intervening period attempts to solve it
were not wholly wanting.

For the desire to extend the White Sea trade to Siberia, and
jealousy of the companies that had known how to procure for
themselves a monopoly of the lucrative commerce with eastern Asia,
still led various merchants now and then during the seventeenth
century to send out vessels to try whether it was possible to
penetrate beyond Novaya Zemlya. I shall confine myself here to an
enumeration of the most important of these undertakings, with the
necessary bibliographical references.

1608. HENRY HUDSON, during his second voyage, landed on Novaya
Zemlya at Karmakul Bay and other places, but did not succeed in his
attempt to sail further t