The great work of Hakluyt, the _Principall Navigations_ in three folio volumes, is a monument of useful labour. Nothing could stop or daunt him when there was a chance of obtaining new information. He rode 200 miles to have an interview with the last survivor of Hore’s expedition to America in 1536. He saved many journals and narratives from destruction, and the deeds they record from oblivion. His work gave a stimulus to colonial and maritime enterprise, and it even inspired our literature. Shakespeare and Milton owe much to Hakluyt. He supplied information and lists of commodities of various countries and commercial instructions to the East India Company and to others engaged in similar enterprises. As the years passed on, to quote his own quaint language, he “continued to wade still further and further in the sweet studie of the historie of cosmographie,” and he achieved his great task, which was, in his own words “to incorporate into one body the torn and scattered limbs of our ancient and late navigations by sea.” He declared geography and chronology to be the sun and moon, the right eye and the left, of all history. When Hakluyt died, on the 23rd November, 1616, he was Archdeacon of Westminster and had reached his sixty-fourth year. He left a large collection of materials which came into the hands of the Rev. Samuel Purchas, who, in due course, published _Hakluytus Posthumus_ or _Purchas his Pilgrimes_, an invaluable work, though marred by injudicious curtailments and omissions. To the student of Arctic history the works of Hakluyt are indispensable. In them are to be found the journals and narratives, or all that could be saved of them, between the date of the earliest English voyages, and that of Hakluyt’s death. CHAPTER XIII GREENLAND VOYAGE OF HALL AND BAFFIN The Norse colony in Greenland had been abandoned to its fate for more than two centuries. The annual _knorr_ or ship had ceased to be sent, and during that long period the Norwegians had shown no sign of conscience, and remained careless and indifferent. At last a king of Denmark and Norway arose who was not so callous. Christian IV was the noblest and most patriotic Sovereign of the House of Oldenburg. He resolved to send an expedition to succour the lost colony or to ascertain its fate, the re-discovery of Greenland by Davis having become known to him. Three ships were fitted out. The _Trost_[59] (Consolation) built by Davis Balfour, shipbuilder to the Danes from 1597 to 1634, was commanded by John Cunningham, a captain in the Danish navy, and the mate was James Hall of Hull, who is said to have been to Greenland before. The second ship, _Den Röd Löve_, parted company and returned. The third was the _Katten_, a pinnace, in charge of another Englishman named John Knight.