The Boy's Hakluyt: English Voyages of Adventure and DiscoveryHakluyt, Richard
History
The Boy's Hakluyt: English Voyages of Adventure and Discovery
Hakluyt, Richard
Discoveries in geography -- English -- Juvenile literature; Voyages and travels -- Juvenile literature
This was the last public appearance of Cabot, or the last of which
mention is made in the chronicles, although he lived for a year longer.
His death occurred probably in London in 1557, sixty-one years after the
first commission issued to the Cabots, John and his sons, from Henry the
seventh. As in the case of his father, neither the exact date of his
death nor the place of his burial is known, and Englishmen and Americans
alike much regret that no monument marks the graves of these discoverers
of our continent of North America.
[Illustration:
SEBASTIAN CABOT AT ABOUT EIGHTY YEARS OF AGE.
Reproduced from the engraving of Seyer’s “History of Bristol,”
published in 1823. The original painting was attributed to Holbein
and destroyed by fire in 1845.
]
The record of Borough’s voyage is his own account, which Hakluyt gives
under the title, “The navigation and discoverie toward the river of Ob
[Obi] made by Master Steven Burrough, master of the Pinnesse called the
Searchthrift with divers things worth the noting, passed in the yere
1556.” The outcome of it was the discovery of the strait between Nova
Zembla and the island of Waigats leading to the Kara Sea, which entrance
was given the discoverer’s name as Burrough’s Strait. While Borough did
not get to the Obi, adverse winds and the lateness of the season
preventing (off Waigats snow was being shovelled from the “Searchthrift”
in August), he was the first Western European to reach the southern
extremity of Nova Zembla, and the first to put “Vaigats” on the map.
Turning at the new-found strait he worked his way back to the White Sea
and wintered at Kholmogro. In the following May he set sail again to
seek the three missing ships which had left St. Nicholas with Chancellor
and the Russian ambassador the year before. After a search of the coast
of Lapland, and a call at “Wardhouse” without result, he was returning
to Kholmogro, when calling at Fisher Island, or Ribachi, off Point
Kegor, in Russian Finland, he learned their fate from Dutch traders
there.
Of this supplementary voyage Borough also wrote a detailed account, with
mention of other “divers things” worth noting. Hakluyt reproduces this
account as “The voyage of the foresaid M. Stephen Burrough, An. 1557,
from Colmogro to Wardhouse, which was sent to seeke the Bona Esperanza,
the Bona Confidentia, and the Philip and Mary, which were not heard of
the yeere before.” Constantly observant, Borough made various practical
business notes along the way. At Fisher Island he found Dutchmen with
Norwegian ships trading prosperously with the Lapps, giving “mighty
strong” beer in exchange for stock-fish. Upon which he shrewdly
comments: “I am certaine that our English double beere would not be
liked by the Kerils and Lappians as long as that would last.” He arrived
back in England in the summer of 1557.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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