Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/48

 by the northwest arose among the English because the Spaniards were in possession of Cape Horn, and the Portuguese of the Cape of Good Hope. All the efforts to find a water highway to the China seas by the northeast clear of obstruction from ice had by 1576 ended in melancholy failures. A company, afterwards designated as the Russia or Muscovy, had been organized in 1554 for the ostensible purpose of exploring &#8220;lands, countries and islands hitherto removed from the knowledge of or unfrequented by the English,&#8221; but really to obtain access to Asia by way of the stormy headlands of Norway and Siberia. The true character of the Northern Seas was at that time unknown. The fate which overtook a portion of the little fleet participating in the first expedition is one of the most tragic in the whole record of the voyages in the Arctic Ocean, calamitous as so many of these voyages have been. The crews of two of the ships perished in the floes of the North. The third vessel made its way into the White Sea, and its commander disembarking upon the coast near Archangel, travelled overland to Moscow, and there holding an interview with the Emperor, laid the foundation of a great trade with the Russian Empire and through Persia with the East. The subsequent expeditions to discover the Northeast Passage were equally unsuccessful in accomplishing that purpose.

The search for the Northwest Passage began in earnest in 1576 with the first voyage of Martin Frobisher, who had secured with some difficulty from the Russia Company a license to sail towards the northeastern parts of