Dutch entered the field; they were trading in the White Sea towards the end of the century, and in 1582 Olivier Brunel, and in 1594 and 1596 William Barents and others, penetrated far eastward. In 1596 an expedition with Barents as pilot discovered Spitsbergen, and one of the ships proceeded eastward to Novaya Zemlya, where Barents died; but the rest of the party withstood the winter and won their way back to the Lapland coast in boats. It was found that Russian trading vessels were making regular journeys to the Ob and the Yenisei, and in the two following centuries the Russians were chiefly instrumental in extending knowledge of the northern coast of Asia. In 1648 Simon Dezhnev may have passed through the strait which afterwards bore the name of Vitus Bering. In 1735 the northernmost promontory of Siberia was rounded in sledges by Lieutenant T. Chelyuskin, and his name was given to it; and in 1728 and 1740 Bering explored both the strait and the sea which bear his name. Meanwhile Henry Hudson had done for the Muscovy Company and for England what Barents had done for the Dutch, for in 1607 he reached a point on the east coast of Greenland in 73° N., studied the conditions of the ice between that country and Spitsbergen, and discovered the island afterwards called Jan Mayen. In 1608 he made similar investigations of the ice from Spitsbergen to Novaya Zemlya, and he was again in the same seas before proceeding to the west to discover the Hudson river and the strait and bay which, as we have seen, were also given his name. Upon the work of Hudson and Barents followed the celebrated whale fisheries of Spitsbergen and elsewhere, with which we have little direct concern in this history; but when, in the second half of the seventeenth century, these fisheries, as far as British enterprise was concerned, reached the height of their prosperity, geographical research was encouraged along the lines which this industry gave opportunity to follow, for a reward of £5,000 was offered in 1776 to any ship which should first sail northward of 89° N. Though the prize was not then won, the foundations of scientific research in the arctic were firmly laid by able and intelligent captains of the whaling ships, among whom William Scoresby is pre-eminent through his voyage as far as 81° 12´ 42´´ N., in 1806, his exploration of the east coast of Greenland from 75° to 69° N. in 1822, and his admirable _Account of the Arctic Regions_. _(b) Antarctic: the Great South Land._