Another account says that this "earth" was a black stone, much like to sea-coal in colour; "and it fortuned a gentlewoman, one of the adventurers' wives, to have a piece thereof, which by chance she threw and burnt in the fire so long that at length, being taken forth and quenched in a little vinegar, it glittered with a bright glistening of gold." So the stuff was taken with some show of excitement to certain gold-refiners in the City to make an assay-thereof; and their verdict was that it held gold and that in very rich measure.
Immediately this news got bruited about, there was no small stir among the merchants and courtiers—all, seamen and men of learning alike, clamoured for another expedition; for they argued that it was of small importance to find a passage to Cathay, if treasures equally valuable lay so near at hand.
Queen Elizabeth and Burghley were both ready to throw economy to the winds, if good gold could be gotten by "Master Frobisher."
So a charter was granted to the "Company of Cathay," and Frobisher was to have 1 per cent. of all he found, together with a fixed yearly stipend. He was to take his own ships Gabriel and Michael, each of 25 tons burden, and a Queen's ship, the Aid, of 200 tons, and furnished with sixty-five sailors and twenty-five soldiers.
Among the crews were ten convicts—highway robbers—taken out of prison and lent to Frobisher as "likely men of their hands."
Frobisher had no relish for such gentry, as being men who might lead mutinies and do lawless deeds; he therefore dropped them on the English coast and carefully forgot to take them with him.
When Frobisher opened his "instructions" he found to his disgust that the finding of a North-West Passage was a very subordinate part of his duty. He was to go to Hall's Island, leave his large ship in safe harbour, and search for gold with the two smaller vessels. He was to plant a colony and capture eight or ten people of the country, "whom we mind shall not return again thither, and therefore you shall have great care how you do take them, for avoiding of offence towards them and the country."
On taking leave, Frobisher had the honour of kissing her Majesty's hand as he knelt before her, who dismissed him "with gracious countenance and comfortable words." At Gravesend they went to church and received the Sacrament—"prepared as good Christians towards God and resolute men for all fortunes."
At Harwich they tarried three days to take in provisions and weed out the convicts. The next place they stopped at was Orkney, where they found the people so strange that they fled from their pebble-built cottages with shrieks at their approach. "The goodman, wife, children, and others of the family eat and sleep on the one side of the house, and the cattle on the other—very beastly and rudely in respect of civility."
As they sailed north great fir-trees came floating by, torn by the roots out of the rocky soil by the great storms, also some icebergs came in their way. When they reached Greenland they could find no place to land; for three days Frobisher wandered up and down in a rowing-boat, but saw only a ragged coast-line of high mountains and snow-clad rocks, looking like lumps of ice in the misty sea. At Hall's Island all the ships met after being separated by a storm.