The events which immediately followed have little bearing on arctic history, excepting that while our merchants were fully alive to the importance of the new commerce opening to their vision they did not neglect exploration. Chancelor and his companions, on a second voyage to Russia, whither they went as commissioners to arrange the treaties and immunities which the Czar might be pleased to grant, were instructed “to use all wayes and meanes possible to learn howe men may passe from Russia, either by land or sea, to Cathaia.” They did not even wait the result of his voyage, but despatched a small vessel, the _Serchthrift_, in command of Steven Burrowe, for north-eastern discovery. On the 27th April, 1556, the vessel being ready at Gravesend, it was visited by many distinguished ladies and gentlemen, including old Cabot, then in his ninety-seventh year, who “gave to the poore most liberall almes; and then, at the sign of the Christopher, hee and his friends banketted,” and “entered into the dance himselfe amongst the rest of the young and lusty company.” The _Serchthrift_ reached the Cola and Petchora rivers, Nova Zembla (the New Land), and the island of Weigats. In proceeding to the eastward they encountered much ice, in which they became entangled, and “which,” says the narrative, “was a fearful sight to see.” But on June 25th they met their first whale, which seems to have inspired more terror even than the ice. The account given of it is amusing. “On St. James his day, bolting to the windewardes, we had the latitude at noon in seventy degrees, twentie minutes. The same day, at a south-west sunne, there was a monstrous whale aboord of us, so neere to our side that we might have thrust a sworde or any other weapon in him, which we durst not doe for feare he should have overthrowen our shippe; and then I called my company together, and all of us shouted, and with the crie that we made he departed from us; there was as much above water of his backe as the bredth of our pinnesse, and at his falling downe he made such a terrible noise in the water, that a man would greatly have marvelled, except he had known the cause of it; but, God be thanked, we were quietly delivered of him.” Burrowe returned to England in the autumn, having reached in an eastward direction a further point than any of his predecessors. Meantime, Chancelor, returning to England in company with the newly-appointed Russian ambassador, was wrecked in Pitsligo Bay, Scotland, the former losing his life, and the latter being saved with difficulty. CHAPTER XIII. EARLY ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS.