"How shall I admire your valor and courage, yee Marine Worthies, beyond all names of worthinesse; that neither dread so long either presense nor absence of the Sunne, nor those foggie mists, tempestuous windes, cold blasts, snowes and haile in the aire; nor the unequal Seas, where the Tritons and Neptune's selfe would quake with chilling feare to behold such monstrous Icie Islands, mustering themselves in those watery plaines, where they hold a continuall civill warre, rushing one upon another, making windes and waves give back; nor the rigid, ragged face of the broken landes, sometimes towering themselves to a loftie height, to see if they can finde refuge from those snowes and colds that continually beat them, sometimes hiding themselves under some hollow hills or cliffes, sometimes sinking and shrinking into valleys, looking pale with snowes and falling in frozen and dead swounes: sometimes breaking their neckes into the sea, rather embracing the waters' than the aires' crueltie," and so on with the like labored fancies. "Great God," he concludes, "to whom all names of greatnesse are little, and lesse than nothing, let me in silence admire thy greatnesse, that in this little heart of man (not able to serve a Kite for a break-fast) hast placed such greatness of spirit as the world is too little to fill." Thus in long-winded meed of praise writes Master Samuel Purchas. Of those bold mariners of whom he speaks our worthy knight, Sir Martin, is one of the first and far from the least. An effort had been made to discover a northwest passage to the Pacific as early as 1527, and another nine years later; but these were feeble attempts, which ended in failure and disaster, and discovered nothing worthy of record. It was in 1576 that Frobisher, one of the most renowned navigators of his day, put into effect the project he had cherished from his youth upward, and for which he had sought aid during fifteen weary years, that of endeavoring to solve the ice-locked secret of the Arctic seas. The fleet with which this daring adventure was undertaken was a strangely insignificant one, consisting of three vessels which were even less in size than those with which Columbus had ventured on his great voyage. Two of these were but of twenty tons burden each, and the third only of ten, while the aggregate crews numbered but thirty-five men. With this tiny squadron, less in size than a trio of fishing-smacks, the daring adventurer set out to traverse the northern seas and face the waves of the great Pacific, if fortune should open to him its gates.