was correctly fixed at 68 deg. 48'. On the 1st Sept./22nd Aug. _William_ was again lost sight of.[124] On the 8th Sept./29th Aug. the _George_ anchored in Tana Fiord, on which there was a town named Hungon.[125] Two days afterwards the _George_ doubled the North Cape, and on the 5th Nov./26th Oct. again anchored at Ratcliffe. Pet and Jackman were the first north-east explorers who ventured themselves in earnest amongst the drift-ice. In navigating among ice they showed good judgment and readiness of resource, and in the history of navigation the honour falls to them of having commanded the first vessels from Western Europe that forced their way into the Kara Sea. It is therefore without justification that BARROW says of them that they were but indifferent navigators.[126] With Pet and Jackman's voyage the English North-east Passage expeditions were broken off for a long time. But the problem was, instead, taken up with great zeal in Holland. Through the fortunate issue of the war of freedom with Spain, and the incitement to enterprise which civil freedom always brings along with it, Holland, already a great industrial and commercial state, had begun, towards the close of the sixteenth century, to develop into a maritime power of the first rank. But navigation to India and China was then rendered impossible for the Dutch, as for the English, by the supremacy of Spain and Portugal at sea, and through the endeavours of these countries to retain the sole right to the commercial routes they had discovered. In order to become sharers in the great profits which commerce with the land of silks and perfumes brought with it, it therefore appeared to be indispensable to discover a new sea route north of Asia or America to the Eastern seas. If such a route had been actually found, it was clear that the position of Holland would have been specially favourable for undertaking this lucrative trade. In this state of things we have to seek for the reason of the delight with which the Dutch hailed the first proposal to force a passage by sea north of Asia to China or Japan. Three successive expeditions were at great expense fitted out for this purpose. These expeditions did not, indeed, attain the intended goal--the discovery of a north-eastern sea route to Eastern Asia, but they not only gained for themselves a prominent place in the history of geographical discovery, but also repaid a hundred fold the money that had been spent on them, in part directly through the whale-fishing to which they gave rise, and which was so profitable to Holland, and in part indirectly through the elevation they gave to the self-respect and national feeling of the people. They compared the achievements of their countrymen among the ice and snow of the Polar lands to the voyage of the Argonauts, to Hannibal's passage of the Alps, and to the campaign of the Macedonians in Asia and the deserts of Libya (see, for instance, BLAVIUS. _Atlas major_, Latin edition, t. i., pp.