Several voyages had been made by Englishmen, mentioned in Dr. Beke’s introduction, towards the north-east, concerning which every particular was known in the Netherlands. This has since been proved by an irrefutable fact; for the so-called journals of Barendsz, which were in 1875 brought back to Norway, turned out to be a Dutch translation of the journals of the English navigators, Pet and Jackman, who, in 1580, endeavoured to find the north-east passage. This translation was found in the old wintering house of Barendsz in Novaya Zemlya, and consequently he must have taken it with him on his last voyage. There can, therefore, be no doubt that the Netherlanders had watched eagerly, and with intense interest, the attempts made by the English to find the north-east passage to the Indies. This may be the reason why a few Netherlanders tried at first to penetrate over-land in that direction, for a certain Olivier Brunel succeeded in reaching as far as the Obi river, travelling all the way on terra firma. Thanks to the industrious and intelligent researches of the historian of “De Noordsche Compagnie”, Mr. S. Muller, Fz., we now know a great deal more of this Olivier Brunel than Dr. Beke did in 1853. The history of Brunel has especially roused Mr. Muller’s interest, and the facts discovered during his researches are so surprising that we think we cannot do better than give them nearly verbatim. At the time that the English settled themselves at the mouth of the Dwina river, in the neighbourhood of the monastery of St. Nicholas, they had spared no trouble to maintain themselves continually in the exclusive possession of the trade in these regions. In this they succeeded but for a short period. Twelve years after their arrival on the shores of the White Sea, the Dutch had found, at least partially, the track of their predecessors. In the year 1565, a certain Philip Winterköning, an exile from Wardöhuis, entered upon a negotiation with the Netherlanders. By his intervention a ship was sent out from Enkhuizen, and arrived at a spot, where a settlement was soon formed, to which they gave the name of Kola. In the following year, 1566, two merchants of Antwerp, Simon van Salingen and Cornelis de Meyer, steering from Kola along the coast, ventured to follow in the track of the English to the White Sea. They landed at the mouth of the Onega, and travelled, disguised as Russians, overland to Moscow. This courageous voyage was undertaken for no other object than to settle private affairs; and they did not avail themselves of the opportunity that thus occurred of establishing commercial relations with the White Sea.