Nor was it enough that men had come to hate the Hansa with that fierce hatred which is felt towards those who, holding power in their hands disgust and oppress their inferiors by overbearing conduct. Even nature seemed to turn against them in that dark moment of their national life. In the years following the burgomaster's war, as Wullenweber's war grew to be called, the herrings which had already failed once or twice during the course of the fifteenth century, either entirely abandoned the Scanian coasts, or came in such small quantities as not to repay the cost of maintenance of the "Witten." There was yet worse in store. Not only did the herrings abandon the Hansa, but they favoured their rivals the Netherlanders, coming in great masses into their waters, and thus enriching them at the expense of their enemies; a circumstance that furnished the pious preacher Bonnus with the theme for a sermon, in which he pointed out, to his own satisfaction, how this was the direct punishment inflicted by Almighty God, for the war so wantonly entered upon by the Hansa. A fresh blow of great force came to the League in the year 1553. The English, so long forcibly kept outside the navigation of the Baltic, had suddenly opened out for themselves a road to the mouth of the Northern Dwina by means of the Arctic Ocean, thus discovering the White Sea, and offering a new route to merchants trading with Russia. The discoverer of this new ocean route was Sir Richard Chancellor, who, together with Sir Hugh Willoughby, had been commissioned by an association of London merchants, to undertake the search of a road to China by way of the icy sea. They set forth in three stately vessels, the _Bona Esperanza_, the _Bona Confidentia_, and the _Edward Bonaventura_. For four months the ships kept close together, but in the region of the North Cape the _Edward Bonaventura_, which Chancellor commanded, was separated, owing to ice and storms, from its comrades--never more to rejoin them. Sir Hugh penetrated with his ships as far as the harbour of Artschina in Northern Lapland, whence he could not continue his journey, owing to the intense cold and the lack of means of sustenance. In this desolate spot, he and his whole crew perished. Long after, fishermen found their bodies. Beside Willoughby's corpse lay his journal, which closed with the desponding words: "Then sent we three men south-east three days' journey, who returned without finding of people or any similitude of habitation." The diary, which has been lately printed, is a touching record of patient endurance and heroic enterprise.