passage which they called the Straits of Nassau, but which are now
known to all the world as the Waigats. They were informed by the
Samoyedes of the coast that, after penetrating the narrow channel, they
would find themselves in a broad and open sea. Subsequent discoveries
showed the correctness of the statement, but it was not permitted to the
adventurers on this occasion to proceed so far. The strait was already
filled with ice-drift, and their vessels were brought to a standstill,
after about a hundred and fifty English miles of progress beyond the
Waigats; for the whole sea of Tartary, converted into a mass of ice-
mountains and islands, and lashed into violent agitation by a north
easterly storm, seemed driving down upon the doomed voyagers. It was
obvious that the sunny clime of Cathay was not thus to be reached, at
least upon that occasion. With difficulty they succeeded in extricating
themselves from the dangers surrounding them, and emerged at last from
the Waigats.

On the 15th of August, in latitude 69 deg. 15', they met the ship of
Barendz and returned in company to Holland, reaching Amsterdam on the
16th of September. Barendz had found the seas and coasts visited by him
destitute of human inhabitants, but swarming with polar bears, with
seals, with a terrible kind of monsters, then seen for the first time, as
large as oxen, with almost human faces and with two long tusks protruding
from each grim and grotesque visage. These mighty beasts, subsequently
known as walrusses or sea-horses, were found sometimes in swarms of two
hundred at a time, basking in the arctic sun, and seemed equally at home
on land, in the sea, and on icebergs. When aware of the approach of
their human visitors, they would slide off an iceblock into the water,
holding their cubs in their arms, and ducking up and down in the sea as
if in sport. Then tossing the young ones away, they would rush upon the
boats, and endeavour to sink the strangers, whom they instinctively