When Frobisher opened his "instructions" he found to his disgust that the finding of a North-West Passage was a very subordinate part of his duty. He was to go to Hall's Island, leave his large ship in safe harbour, and search for gold with the two smaller vessels. He was to plant a colony and capture eight or ten people of the country, "whom we mind shall not return again thither, and therefore you shall have great care how you do take them, for avoiding of offence towards them and the country." On taking leave, Frobisher had the honour of kissing her Majesty's hand as he knelt before her, who dismissed him "with gracious countenance and comfortable words." At Gravesend they went to church and received the Sacrament--"prepared as good Christians towards God and resolute men for all fortunes." At Harwich they tarried three days to take in provisions and weed out the convicts. The next place they stopped at was Orkney, where they found the people so strange that they fled from their pebble-built cottages with shrieks at their approach. "The goodman, wife, children, and others of the family eat and sleep on the one side of the house, and the cattle on the other--very beastly and rudely in respect of civility." As they sailed north great fir-trees came floating by, torn by the roots out of the rocky soil by the great storms, also some icebergs came in their way. When they reached Greenland they could find no place to land; for three days Frobisher wandered up and down in a rowing-boat, but saw only a ragged coast-line of high mountains and snow-clad rocks, looking like lumps of ice in the misty sea. At Hall's Island all the ships met after being separated by a storm. Then for five weeks Frobisher searched the land for gold ore, and found little. They met some natives near Frobisher's Straits and very pleasantly spent a great part of one day in exchanging merchandise, the Eskimos making all possible signs of friendship. But Frobisher, in obedience to the Queen's orders, tried to coax two of the natives into his boat, and at once the new-found friends were turned into enemies; for they ran for their bows and wounded several of our men. Soon after they were menaced by a host of icebergs, a thousand or more, and the whole night long was spent in evading these dangerous visitors. "Some scraped us, and some escaped us. In the end we were saved, God being our best steersman." In the morning Frobisher called his men to thank God heartily for His protection of them in the time of danger. The storm cleared Frobisher's Straits of pack-ice, and sailing up they found a big fish embayed with ice, about twelve feet long, having a horn of two yards long growing out of its snout. This horn, "wreathed and straight, like in fashion to a taper made of wax," they took home and presented to the Queen at Windsor.