24 and 31.) As these voyages together present the grandest attempts to solve the problem that lay before the _Vega_ expedition, I shall here give a somewhat detailed account of them. [Illustration: DUTCH SKIPPER. After G. de Veer. ] THE FIRST DUTCH EXPEDITION, 1594.--This was fitted out at the expense of private persons, mainly by the merchants BALTHASAR MUCHERON, JACOB VALCKE, and FRANCISCUS MAELSON. The first intention was to send out only two vessels with the view of forcing a passage through the sound at Vaygats towards the east, but on the famous geographer PLANCIUS representing that the route north of Novaya Zemlya was that which would lead most certainly to the desired goal, other two were fitted out, so that no fewer than four vessels went out in the year 1594 on an exploratory expedition towards the north. Of these, two, viz. a large vessel, specially equipped, it would appear, for the northern waters, called the _Mercurius_, and commanded by WILLEM BARENTS,[127] and a common fishing-sloop, attempted the way past the northern extremity of Novaya Zemlya. The two others, viz. the _Swan_ of Zeeland, commanded by CORNELIS CORNELISZ. NAY, and the _Mercurius_ of Enkhuizen, commanded by BRANDT YSBRADTSZ. TETGALES, were to pass through the sound at Vaygats Island. All the four vessels left the Texel on the 15/5th June, and eighteen days later arrived at Kilduin in Russian Lapland, a place where at that time vessels, bound for the White Sea, often called. Here the two divisions of the expedition parted company.