belonged to the men they had lost the year before. To
rescue or revenge these unfortunates, Frobisher attacked the
natives, who valiantly resisted, even plucking the arrows
from their bodies to use as missiles, and, when mortally
hurt, flinging themselves from the rocks into the sea. At
length they gave ground, and fled to the loftier cliffs,
leaving two of their women as trophies to the assailants.
These two, one "being olde," says the record, "the other
encombred with a yong childe, we took. The olde wretch, whom
divers of our Saylors supposed to be eyther the Divell, or a
witch, had her buskins plucked off, to see if she were
cloven-footed; and for her ougly hewe and deformitie, we let
her goe; the young woman and the childe we brought away."

This was not the last of their encounters with the Eskimos,
who, incensed against them, made every effort to entrap them
into their power. Their stratagems consisted in placing
tempting pieces of meat at points near which they lay in
ambush, and in pretending lameness to decoy the Englishmen
into pursuit. These schemes failing, they made a furious
assault upon the vessel with arrows and other missiles.

Before the strait could be fully traversed, ice had formed
so thickly that further progress was stopped, and, leaving
the hoped-for Cathay for future voyagers, the mariners
turned their prows homeward, their vessels laden with two
hundred tons of the glittering stone.

Strangely enough, an examination of this material failed to
dispel the delusion. The scientists of that day declared