The last modern writer who treats of Oliver Brunel is Dr. Hamel, who, assuming him to be the Alferius of Balak, makes him, in his work already cited, [115] the subject of an hypothetical biographical memoir, beginning with the words, “Ich finde es wahrscheinlich”, but without seeming to be aware of what Gerard says respecting his hero, except so far only as it is repeated by Witsen. By this writer, therefore, no additional light is thrown on the subject now under consideration; and, in fact, it is to the original authority, after all, that we must revert for the only information that is really available and useful. From this authority, then, we learn that Oliver Brunel, a native of Brussels, went in a vessel belonging to the town of Enkhuysen on a trading voyage into the Russian seas, where, after collecting a valuable cargo, he was lost; and that his enterprise (though unsuccessful), together with those of the English in the same quarter, induced the Dutch to set on foot the memorable expeditions which form the subject of the following pages. If this person was really the Alferius who was recommended by Balak to Mercator in the year 1581, he must subsequently have been engaged in the Russian trade for several years before his unlucky end; or else Gerard, writing in 1612, would surely not have named him as an immediate cause of an undertaking which was not projected till 1593. It is not, however, to be imagined that the Netherlanders—we can scarcely speak of the “Dutch” at the earliest period to which we are now adverting—had no previous connexion with the northern coasts of Russia, though it is true that that connexion was then but of recent date. For, as is stated by Edge, the English Russia Company having “made their first discoverie in the yeere 1553, there was neuer heard of any Netherlander that frequented those seas vntil the yeere 1578. At which time they first began to come to Cola, and within a yeere or two after, one Iohn de Whale [de Walle], a Netherlander, came to the Bay of Saint Nicholas, being drawne thither by the perswasion of some English, for their better meane of interloping; which was the first man of that nation that euer was seene there.” [116] It was this same John de Walle, who was afterwards present at the coronation of the Emperor Fedor Ivanovich, at Moscow, on the 10th of June, 1584, when he had a dispute with Jerome Horsey, the English ambassador, as to precedency, which was decided by the emperor in favour of the latter. He is described by Horsey as “a famous merchant of Netherland, being newly come to Mosco, who gaue himselfe out to be the king of Spaines subiect.” [117]