He ascended this strait a distance of one hundred and fifty miles. It was not till the eighth day that he saw any inhabitants. He then found that the country was sparsely settled by a race resembling Tartars. He went ashore and established friendly relations with a colony of nineteen persons, to each one of whom he gave a "threaden point,"--in other words, a needle and thread. A few days afterwards, five of the crew were taken by the natives and their boat destroyed. The inlet in which this happened was called Five Men's Sound. The next morning the vessels ran in-shore, shot off a fauconet and sounded a trumpet, but heard nothing of the lost sailors. However, Frobisher caught one of the natives in return, having decoyed him by the tinkling of a bell. When he found himself in captivity, we are told that "from very choler and disdain he bit his tongue in twain within his mouth: notwithstanding, he died not thereof, but lived until he came to England, and then he died of cold which he had taken at sea." On the 26th of August, Frobisher weighed anchor and started to return to England, the snow lying a foot deep upon the decks. He arrived at Yarmouth on the 1st of October. One of Frobisher's sailors had brought with him a bit of shining black stone, which, upon examination, was found to yield an infinitesimal quantity of gold. The Northwest Passage became now a matter of secondary interest, the mines of Frobisher's Strait promising a more speedy and abundant return. The society he had formed determined to send him out anew, in vessels better equipped and provisioned for a longer period. He left Blackwall on the 26th of May, 1577, in her Majesty's ship Aide, of one hundred and eighty tons, followed by the Gabriel and Michael, his ostensible object being to discover "America to be an island environed with the sea, wherethrough our merchants may have course and recourse with their merchandise, from these our northernmost parts of Europe to those oriental coasts of Asia, to their no little commodity and profit that do or shall frequent the same." The fleet passed the Orkneys on the 8th of June. For a month they sailed to the westward, the season of the year being that when, in those latitudes, a bright twilight takes the place of the light of day during the few hours that the sun is below the horizon; so that the crew had "the fruition of their books and other pleasures,--a thing of no small moment to such as wander in unknown seas and long navigations, especially when both the winds and raging surges do pass their common and wonted course." Throughout the voyage they met huge fir-trees, which they supposed to have been uprooted by the winds, driven into the sea by floods, and borne away by the currents.