The account of this voyage was the one that Hakluyt travelled two hundred miles on horseback to get from the sole survivor of the company living at the time of his writing, or, in his own words, “to learn the whole truth of this voyage from his own mouth as being the only man now alive that was in this discovery.” He was Thomas Buts, a son of Sir William Buts of Norfolk. Hakluyt relates that upon his return from the voyage Buts was so changed in appearance through the hunger and misery he had undergone that his parents did not recognize him as their son till they found a secret mark on his person, “which was a wart upon one of his knees.” With the accession of Edward the sixth, the boy king, in 1547, new projects began to develop for further discovery northward. Sebastian Cabot was again in England and settled at Bristol. He was now an old man, yet still stalwart in mind and red-blooded for action. His fame was widespread and he had come to be called “The Great Seaman.” While pilot major of Spain, he had, with other achievements, made important discoveries in South America. Heading an expedition originally planned to pursue discovery in the Pacific, through the Strait of Magellan (discovered and passed by that brilliant Portuguese, Fernao de Magalhães, in 1520, who the next year discovered the Philippines), he had explored the River Plate, naming it Rio de la Plata, the Silver River, because of the splendour of the silver ornaments worn by the Indians of the region, and had anchored off the site of the present city of Buenos Ayres; had built a fort at one of the mouths of the Parana and begun a settlement there; had further ascended the Parana; penetrated the Paraguay; and thence entered the Vermejo, where he and his party had a fierce fight with the savages. In Edward’s second year, 1549, he was appointed Grand Pilot of England, with an annual pension of £166 13_s._ and 6_d._ in consideration of the “good and acceptable service done and to be done” by him for the English crown. Not long after he is found turning from the Northwest Passage and advising a new voyage for the discovery of a Northeast route to India. From this a project of various London merchant adventurers developed which resulted in an expedition in 1553 starting under Sir Hugh Willoughby and continued by Richard Chancellor, which, although failing to find Cathay, made notable discoveries with the opening to Europe of the great empire of Russia. X THE OPENING OF RUSSIA