So Davis rearranged his crews and provisions, and with the _Moonshine_ and a selection of his best men he determined to voyage on "as God should direct him," while the _Mermaid_ should carry the sick and feeble and fainthearted home. Davis then crossed over the strait called by his name and explored the coast about Cumberland Sound. Again he tried here to discover the long-sought passage, but the brief summer season was almost past and he had to content himself with exploring the shores of Labrador, unconsciously following the track made by John Cabot eighty-nine years before. But on his return home the merchants of London were disappointed. Davis had indeed explored an immense extent of coast-line, and he had brought back a cargo of cod-fish and five hundred seal skins, but Cathay seemed as far off as ever. One merchant prince, Sanderson by name, was still very keen, and he helped Davis to fit out yet another expedition. With three ships, the _Sunshine_, the _Elizabeth_, and the _Helen_, the undaunted Arctic explorer now found himself for the third summer in succession at his old halting-place, Gilbert's Sound, on the west coast of Greenland. Leaving his somewhat discontented crews to go fishing off the coast of Labrador, he took the little twenty-ton pinnace, with a small party of brave spirits like his own, and made his way northwards in a free and open sea. The weather was hot, land was visible on both sides, and the English mariners were under the impression that they were sailing up a gulf. But the passage grew wider and wider, till Davis found himself with the sea all open to west and north. He had crossed the Arctic Circle and reached the most northerly point ever yet reached by an explorer. Seeing on his right a lofty cliff, he named it "Sanderson his Hope," for it seemed to give hope of the long-sought passage to Cathay. It was a memorable day in the annals of discovery, 30th June 1587, when Davis reached this famous point on the coast of Greenland. "A bright blue sea extended to the horizon on the north and west, obstructed by no ice, but here and there a few majestic icebergs with peaks snowy shooting up into the sky." To the eastward were the granite mountains of Greenland, and beyond them the white line of the mightiest glacier in the world. Rising immediately above the tiny vessel was the beetling wall of Hope Sanderson, with its summit eight hundred and fifty feet above sea-level. At its base the sea was a sheet of foam and spray. It must have been a scene like fairyland, for, as Davis remarked, there was "no ice towards the north, but a great sea, free, large, very salt and blue, and of an unsearchable depth." But again disappointment awaited him. That night a wind from the north barred further advance as a mighty bank of ice some eight feet thick came drifting down toward the Atlantic. Again and again he attempted to get on, but it was impossible, and reluctantly enough he turned the little ship southwards.