a little house of lime and stone was erected under Captain Fenton’s direction for possible occupation another year. And when at length the company were making ready to leave the place, this house was stocked with the trifles they had brought for traffic with the natives—bells, whistles, knives, looking-glasses, combs, pins, leaden toy men and women, some on horseback some on foot—"the better to allure" the “bruitish and uncivill people to courtesie” against another coming of the Englishmen. Toward the middle of August the “Thomas Allen” had joined the fleet here, and her company were working a “mine” which Captain Yorke had found on an island by Bear’s Sound, which he called the “Countess of Sussex Mine.” Near the end of the month the “Anne Francis” and the “Moone” had arrived. Now the fleet were once more together, excepting the lost “Dennis” and the “Thomas of Ipswich,” supposed also to be lost. The “Thomas of Ipswich,” however, as subsequently appeared, had, after the tempest of July twenty-six, when she was at sea in company with the “Anne Francis” and the “Moone,” turned about under the cover of night, and scudded home for England. The “Anne Francis” came up laden with ore which she had taken on an island in a harbour of Queen’s Foreland, which Best had found, and which he reported was in such abundance there that if its goodness equalled its plentifulness it “might reasonably suffice all the gold-gluttons of the world.” The adventures of this ship after the tempest of the twenty-sixth of July—which the chroniclers distinguished as “the day of the great snowe”—were remarkable in several respects, and Captain Best showed himself to be of the same heroic mould as Captain Frobisher. When she, with the “Moone” and the “Thomas of Ipswich” had been for a long time beating about off “Queen’s Foreland,” and were bruised and battered from their contacts with the ice, Best called the several captains and masters to a conference in her cabin. Having grave doubts as to the fate of the rest of the fleet, and considering the sorry condition of their own vessels, together with the lateness of the season, a proposal to abandon further efforts and turn their prows homeward was earnestly debated. Both sides having been fully heard, Best rendered the decision. It should never be spoken of him, he declared, that “hee would ever return without doing his endeavours to finde the Fleete and know the certaintie of the General’s safetie.” It was therefore agreed that first a fit harbour should be sought; that this found, the pinnace brought out in parts on the “Anne Francis” should be put together; and that then, leaving the ships in the harbour, he himself would take the pinnace and push up the “straits” to prove if it were possible for the ships to break through the ice and reach the Countess of Warwick’s Land; and also to seek tidings of Frobisher and the rest of the fleet. In the meantime the skippers were to keep the craft together as near as they could, “as