Day by day De Veer tells the story of that adventurous voyage, with its long succession of dangers and disappointments, until they reached the mainland and sent the Lapland messenger to Kola, who returned with a letter from Jan Corneliszoon Rijp, who at first they could not believe was the old friend from whom they had parted at Bear Island; and more briefly he continues the story until Amsterdam was reached on the 1st of November, when the survivors, in the same clothes they wore in their winter quarters, fur caps and white fox-skins, walked up to the house of Pieter Hasselaer to report themselves on arrival and received the hearty welcome they deserved.
Though Van Heemskerck had failed to make the passage to the east by way of the north, he was perhaps destined for greater fame on the far less rigorous route. Like Nelson he went on an Arctic expedition that failed, and then secured a place in history by a sea-fight in Spanish waters, for which his countrymen will never forget him. He it was who as Vice-Admiral of Holland fought the Spanish fleet at Gibraltar in the decisive battle of the 25th of April, 1607, in which with his twenty-six vessels he attacked Juan Alvarez Davila's twenty ships and ten galleons. Early in the struggle he had his leg swept off by a cannon shot, but he remained on deck till he died, gaining the complete victory which rendered his countrymen free from hindrance on the road to the Indies round the Cape of Good Hope, of which for so many years they made such profitable use. It is customary to give all the credit of the Arctic voyage to Barents on the ground that his captain was no sailor, but Holland knows no better sailor than Jacob Van Heemskerck of Gibraltar Bay.
On the 9th of September, 1871, Captain Elling Carlsen, sailing in the Barents Sea, which he had entered round Icy Cape, landed in Ice Haven and found the house just as De Veer had described it. There it had stood in cold storage for 274 years, never having been entered by human foot since Van Heemskerck had shut the door. The bunks, the table, the bath, the clock, in short everything, all in order, as the orderly Dutchmen had left it. Never did a voyage book receive such ample verification; never did the description of an island home stand the test better.
Carlsen, to begin with, knew nothing of De Veer or Barents, but he set to work in a conscientious way and recorded the results like a true archæologist. "Thursday, 14th," he wrote in his log, "Calm with clear sky. Four o'clock in the morning we went ashore further to investigate the wintering place. On digging we found again several objects, such as drumsticks, a hilt of a sword, and spears. Altogether it seemed that the people had been equipped in a warlike manner, but nothing was found which could indicate the presence of human remains. On the beach we found pieces of wood which had formerly belonged to some part of a ship, for which reason I believe that a vessel has been wrecked there, the crew of which built the house with the materials of the wreck and afterwards betook themselves to boats."
Bringing away a very large number of articles, he resumed his voyage and landed at Hammerfest, where Mr. E. C. Lister Kay, who happened to be there on a yachting trip, bought them, thinking they would be repurchased from him, at the price he gave, for one of our own museums. In this he was disappointed, and the collection was taken down to his house in Dorsetshire, where Count Bylandt, the Dutch Ambassador, happening to hear of it, called and bought it for his Government, who placed it at the Hague in a room, the exact imitation of that in Novaya Zemlya.
In July, 1876, Mr. Charles Gardiner, another English yachtsman, when on a cruise in the Glow-worm in Barents Sea, made a call at the house and brought away many other relics, which he presented to the Dutch, to be added to those at the Hague; and among them was the powder-flask hung in the chimney, containing the paper mentioned by De Veer. The previous August Captain Gundersen had been there in the Norwegian schooner Regina. In one of the chests he found two charts and what he described as Barents's Journal. The journal proved to be a manuscript Dutch translation of the story of the voyage in 1580 of Arthur Pet and Charles Jackman.
In 1608, eleven years after Barents died, Henry Hudson, in the Muscovy Company's service, was sent to China by the north-east. He sailed on the 22nd of April from St. Katharine's, near the Tower of London, and on the 3rd of June passed the North Cape on his way to Novaya Zemlya, which he reached near Cape Britwin twenty-three days afterwards. For some considerable distance he had skirted the ice pack, vainly endeavouring to get through to the northward and enter the Kara Sea round the Orange Islands.
This being impracticable he ranged southwards looking for a passage through at Kostin Shar, which in the Dutch map he had with him was marked as a strait and proved to be a bay. Had he been able to go a little further north than Cape Britwin he might have found that Matyushin Shar, like a rift in the rocks, divides the long island in half, though at that early season the ice would have probably been blocking it. From Kostin or thereabouts he departed for home, his voyage failing almost at the outset, owing to his being two months too early.
While off the coast he sent his boat ashore several times. "Generally," he says, "all the land of Nova Zembla that we have yet seen is to a man's eye a pleasant land; much main high land with no snow on it, looking in some places green, and deer feeding thereon; and the hills are partly covered with snow and partly bare"—rather a different picture from that given by De Veer of what it was like in the winter. De Veer, too, had committed himself to the statement that there were no deer in the country, but here were Hudson's men frequently coming upon their traces, and on the 2nd of July reporting that they had seen "a herd of white deer, ten in a company," bringing on board with them a white lock of deer's hair in proof thereof.
On his return Hudson left the service of the Muscovy Company. He went to Holland, and, early in April, 1609, was sent out by the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch East India Company. On the 5th of May he rounded the North Cape, making for Novaya Zemlya, and a few days afterwards reached the ice. Here, according to Dutch accounts, his men mutinied, but what happened during the trouble is not recorded. Whether it was really owing to a mutiny, or, as is by no means improbable, to secret instructions received at his departure, Hudson, on the 14th, made sail for the North Cape, passed it on the 19th, when he observed a spot on the sun, and then went off westwards to Newfoundland, making direct apparently for the mouth of the river now bearing his name, which was discovered by Verrazano in March, 1524, and surveyed by Gomez in the following year, and was at the time of Hudson's visit British territory.