moreover, that they had sailed two degrees beyond the Pole.” The Hollander also stated that they had an open sea, free from ice, and that the weather was warm. Whatever amount of truth there might be in this beerhouse story, its publication had an influence at the time, and an expedition, partly provided by the Government and partly by the Duke of York and several other noblemen and gentlemen, was despatched at the end of May, 1676. The _Speedwell_ and _Prosperous_, under the command respectively of Captains Wood and Flawes, were the vessels employed. The first struck on a ledge of rocks off Nova Zembla, and Wood had scarcely time to get the bread and carpenter’s tools ashore before she went to pieces. Two of the crew were lost, and the rest safely landed. They had almost concluded to attempt a boat voyage, similar to that made by the brave Hollanders of Barents’ third expedition, when the _Prosperous_, attracted by a great fire which they had made on the shore, hove in sight, and took them on board. The two crews reached England safely, and the voyage, in the words of a distinguished writer, “seems to have closed the long list of unfortunate northern expeditions in that century; and the discovery, if not absolutely despaired of, by being so often missed, ceased for many years to be sought for.” Nor did the eighteenth century open much more auspiciously. Mr. Knight, an old servant of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and for a long time governor of their leading establishment on Nelson’s River, had learned from the Indians that in the extreme north of their territory, and on the banks of a navigable river, there was a rich mine of native copper. Knight was so impressed with the value of this information, that, after much trouble, he induced the Company to send out an expedition for the purpose of investigating the matter. Knight himself, nearly eighty years of age, had a general charge of the expedition, the vessels of which were commanded by Captains Barlow and Vaughan. The expedition left in the spring of 1719, and never returned; it was not till forty-eight years afterwards that any information was gleaned concerning the melancholy fate of the whole party. In the year 1767 some of the Company’s men employed in whaling near Marble Island stood in close to the shore, where in a harbour they discovered the remains of a house, the hulls of two ships under water, and guns, anchors, cables, an anvil, and other heavy articles, which had not been removed by the natives. The following, from a work by Samuel Hearne,(26) sufficiently indicates the misery to which the party had been reduced, before death terminated their sufferings. It was obtained through the medium of an Esquimaux interpreter from the natives.