Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/365

346 conferred with them, and afterward assured Frobisher that the men were alive, and should be delivered up; calling on him, moreover, to send them a letter. Therefore a letter was written, and on the 7th of August the natives took it, signifying that in three days they would return. At the appointed time they indeed returned, and showed themselves in small numbers, but yet brought no letter or word from the missing men. Moreover, it was observed that many of them were concealed behind the rocks, and it seemed clear that some treachery was meditated; whereupon the English prudently kept away from the trap. By the 21st of August, the work of loading the ships with two hundred tons of the ore was finished, and on the 23d sail was made for England.

The show of ore which Frobisher took back to England excited so much enthusiasm for another expedition, that a fleet of fifteen vessels was ready to sail in May, 1578. It was proposed to establish a colony of one hundred persons, who should live through the year on an island in the Countess of Warwick's Sound. This colony was to consist of miners, mariners, soldiers, gold-refiners, bakers, carpenters, &c. A "strong fort or house of timber, artificially framed and cunningly devised by a notable learned man," was to be carried out in the ships, and put up on the island. On the way out, however, one of the barks was sunk, and part of the house was lost.

On the 1st of August the order was given from Frobisher, who had reached the Countess of Warwick's Sound, to disembark from the vessels all the men and stores, and land them on the Countess of Warwick's Island, and to prepare at once for mining. "Then," says Hakluyt, "whilst the Mariners plyed their worke, the Captaines sought out new mynes, the goldfiners made tryall of the Ore," &c. On the 9th, a consultation on the house was held. It was discovered that only the east side and the south side of the building had come safely to hand, the other parts having been either lost or used in repairing the ships, which had been much beaten by storms in the passage. It was then thought, seeing there was not timber enough for a house to accommodate one hundred people, that a house for sixty should be set up. The carpenters, being consulted, declared that they should want five or six weeks to do the work, whereas there remained but twenty-three days before the ships must leave the country; consequently it was determined not to put up the house that year.

On the 30th of August, as Hakluyt says, "the Masons finished a house which Captaine Fenton caused to be made of lyme and stone upon the Countess of Warwick's Island, to the end we might prove, against the next yeere, whether the snow could overwhelme it, the frost break it up, or the people dismember the same." Again: "We buried the timber of our pretended [intended] fort."

The fact that this expedition carried a large quantity of coal is shown by the following extract from Hakluyt, concerning the leakage of water on board the fleet: "The great cause of this leakage and wasting was for that the great timber and sea cole, which lay so weighty upon the barrels, brake, bruised, and rotted the hoopes asunder."